


Finding My Way Back To You

by Writegirl



Series: Fucked Up Love Songs [8]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Awesome Skye (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Phil Coulson, Darcy Feels, Darcy Lewis's iPod, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Helheimr | Hel (Realm), I Will Go Down With This Ship, Level 7 (SHIELD), Manipulative Nick Fury, Memory Magic, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Phil Coulson & Nick Fury Friendship, Post-HYDRA Reveal, Pre-HYDRA Reveal, Protective Phil Coulson, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Thor Is Not Stupid, Tony Stark Has A Heart, True Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-23 00:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2527808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writegirl/pseuds/Writegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is ever completely erased. Something remains behind, even if you don't know it's there.</p><p> <i> Darcy looked at the ceiling and wondered if Heimdal would answer if she called him. Zap her the hell out of here and drop her off at the Tower. Or in Australia, or anywhere, so long as it wasn’t here.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! I told myself I wasn't going to do this, but I love writing in this series so much I had to keep going. And fix what I messed up last time, because I absolutely love this pairing.  
> This part of the verse takes place immediately after the Agents of SHIELD episode The Magical Place. In the Fucked Up Love Songs Series it starts a year after Because I Could Not Stop for Death (roughly August 2013). This will be Thor: The Dark World and Agents of SHIELD compliant (at least through season 1).

        There was a time (a blissful, not too long ago time) when Phil had a stretch of four years where the only time he saw the inside of a hospital was when he had to suffer through a yearly physical. That was, until he let Nick talk him into leading a team that seemed to put him in the thick of things more often than not. As much as he loved fieldwork he knew his limitations, and they didn’t include rappelling down the side of buildings while snipers tried their best to kill him. His position on the Bus was supposed to be…not less dangerous, but certainly less physically taxing than it was turning out to be.  


        His doctor agreed.  


        “You have the literature on what to expect over the next four to six weeks,” Dr. Zepata told him. “You’ll be called in for a follow-up next month. Do not miss it.”  


        “Yes, Ma’am,” Coulson said, trying to smile around the sour feeling in his stomach.  


        She gave him a hard look. “Mental Health gave you an all clear, but we both know what that means. Anything happens that we need to know about, tell us. No soldiering on or man-pain.” She grimaced. “And no finding cracks to slip through, agent, or I’ll have you back in here faster than you can imagine.”  


        He gave her a respectful nod. Years of required psych evaluations gave you a unique insight into defeating them. He’d had more than a few of the agents under his command slip through the cracks; himself more times than he was comfortable admitting, especially in his early years. “Yes, Ma’am.”  


        She opened her mouth, probably to tell him to stop fucking calling her ma’am, then settled back down. They’d known each other for over ten years; he was allowed to tease her. “I mean it, Phil. Don’t make me worry about you, too. I have enough shit on my plate without that.”  


        “I know.” Not 'I promise' or 'Don’t worry', because she wouldn’t believe him.  


        “Then you’re free to go. Try to stay healthy.”  


        Phil was buttoning his shirt when Nick came into the small room of the medical suite. The list of his injuries was shorter than after some of his more colorful missions (contusions, bruised ribs, inflamed kidney, dehydration, three stitches above his right eye), but they both knew it wasn’t the physical reminders that were the most dangerous. At the moment he could taste his grandmother’s strawberry streusel, something he hadn’t had in nearly twenty years, and another tart crumbly smell he assumed was some kind of fruited bread. They hid the nerve-wracking industrial cleaner smell of the examination room, pulled him somewhere safer than where he was at present. He let those two sensations, phantoms though they were, ground him.  


        “Director,” he said shortly as he eased into his suit jacket, ribs glowing with pain.  


        “Agent Coulson.”  


        Phil stayed quiet, fussing with his clothes. He knew Nick read his debriefing, if he hadn’t listened to it live. Another time he might have smiled at the other man; a brief tilting of his lips to let him know that he was fine, that they hadn’t broken him this time.  


        _The order came from Director Fury himself.  
_

        “Zepata gave you an all-clear, but Cray’s concerned over some of your scans,” the Director started. There was no concern in his voice.  


        “Is he?”  


        Fury’s eye twitched. “The machine they had you hooked into disrupted your brain waves. He’s concerned about long term affects.”  


        _Like smelling and tasting things you know aren’t there._ “I’ve been under mandatory forty-eight hour observation,” Coulson said slowly. “I’d like to get back to my team.”  


        Fury examined him, and Phil could imagine the other man running his current state against a list of tells. He kept his face neutral, let the skin between his eyes crinkle just enough to display some displeasure that could easily be attributed to being held in medical pending final clearance. Not because the man he thought of as a friend played God despite his clear wishes to the contrary.  


        “Hand was impressed by your team,” Fury informed him.  


        The streusel smell intensified. “I imagine Agent Hand is impressed by anyone who doesn’t immediately bow to her demands.”  


        That got a twitch of amusement from the other man. “She was especially interested in your little hacker.”  


        Phil clenched his fist at the anger (rage, _pain_ ) that went through him at the statement, and the depth of his own emotions startled him. Skye was a member of his team, she’d proven herself useful, resourceful, and most of all loyal to the people and causes she cared for. “If it wasn’t for her I’d still be tripping the life fantastic.” He shrugged. “Or dead.”  


        “She’s caught the attention of some of our other departments,” Nick leaned against the door, arms folded. He hadn’t missed the change in his demeanor and was fishing now. “CS has been drooling ever since she pulled that little stunt at the Hub. Operations likes the thought of a brain that doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty.”  


        Coulson slowly counted backwards from one hundred and willed the tension that bunched his shoulders to ease. “Skye is good at what she does,” he started. “But she’s better suited as a consultant than an agent.”  


        “Speaking of,” Nick pulled two photos out of his coat pocket. “This is what happened to your original target. Anything look familiar?”  


        There was a warm, vicious satisfaction in seeing one of his captors dead, left in the dirt beside a ramshackle building like so much trash. Raised veins traced their way across Po’s face, extending from his left ear in a pattern that was vaguely familiar. “We’ve seen this before,” he murmured.  


        “We have. About six years ago now.”  


        It clicked. Sand, dust…an abandoned terrorist camp deep in Afghanistan. “Raza.”  


        “Autopsy confirms that the same method was used to kill Po: high frequency ultrasound. Short burst, extremely effective. Fried his brain before he could respond.” Fury sighed heavily. “There are about five different weapons vendors who’ve been working on something that uses sound this way. Two guesses who got there first.”  


        “Stark.”  


        “Stark’s been sitting on this since 2005. Non-lethal usage only, according to their research. It was discontinued because of a lack of military interest.” He nodded to the pictures. “It popped up on Raza, now on Po.”  


        Coulson thought back. He could remember seeing Po stiffen after Raina handed him the phone, watched him drop to the floor and be carried out with only vague amusement. The man had thought himself too important to be killed. Apparently his superiors thought otherwise. “If Stark discontinued it, how did Centipede get their hands on the tech?”  


        “We’re working on that in connection with someone else Stark’s run up against recently.” Fury left the door and settled into a chair. “What can you tell me about AIM?”

 

        "Okay, try these,” Darcy called as she set a platter of cheese muffins on the tiny kitchen table; an even two-dozen fist sized lumps of goodness.  


        It was mid-afternoon, and the sun was (finally) peeking from behind the clouds, bathing the kitchen in champagne-colored light. Mixed with the savory smell of cheese and fresh-baked things it became perfect. She liked London, she really did, but there were times when she missed the near constant sunshine of New Mexico.  


        Thor left the balcony and sat down at the table. His chair creaked in protest. “Are these for me alone, Lady Darcy?”  


        She smiled and sat across from him, folding her arms on the table. He always got formal when it came to meals. “Yep, all for you, Big Guy.”  


        He answered her smile and reached for one of the muffins. She watched as he slowly demolished the tray until only five remained. “Better than Pop Tarts, I take it,” she teased as he chewed.  


        The amount of Pop Tarts the Asgardian put away his first week on Earth was enough to make her stomach churn in sympathy. He could eat three boxes by himself without blinking, which couldn’t be good for anyone, alien metabolism or not. With that in mind she started a campaign to introduce Thor to different foods. Aside from the near fatal Indian food incident (honestly, how was she supposed to know saffron was poisonous to space aliens?) the project was a success.  


        “Please, Darcy,” he said, gesturing to the remaining pastries. “They are truly wonderful, it is only fitting that you also enjoy your works.”  


        Darcy rolled her eyes and reached for a muffin.  


        As they ate she felt a tingle of nostalgia. She could almost be back in Puente Antiguo in Jane’s lab, trying to figure out if Thor was a super cut, crazy hobo or just really dedicated to a role at some local theater. Then she remembered the whole Destroyer thing, and SHIELD, and alien invasions. The past two years of her life at times moved too fast for her to keep up so she settled for going with the current. When Jane officially told SHIELD to suck it and set out on her own Darcy followed, even when she ended up moving to London because no university in the US would touch her boss with a ten foot pole. Which yeah, okay, she could see how a government organization could do that to a scientist, but it was disturbing to find out said government was only a short step past blacklisting like it was the 1950s.  


        Jane took it all like a champ. Despite no one wanting to hire her there were plenty of people on the fringes willing to use her as a consultant. The Foster Theory was making waves in the physics community. Hell, it was making tsunamis. Let everyone try and treat her like shit, she still knew more about the workings of the universe than just about anyone else on the planet and had the math to back it up. She was gearing up for a lecture tour in the spring (India, China, and Japan) when they got a call from Eric about some kind of uber-scary readings he was picking up and wanted a second opinion on, and then aliens happened. Again. Seriously, that was two occasions out of three where Jane and Eric worked together and little green men, (well, hot Norse dudes and space elves) decided to crash the party.  


        Their small apartment was even smaller with Thor now in residence. It wasn’t that he tried to take up space; it was just that when you were a six foot four inch tower of space alien built like a brick shithouse you took up space. Thor, because he was first and foremost a prince, insisted on sleeping on the tiny couch for the first week until both Jane and Darcy began getting sympathy pains from the way he had to crunch himself to fit. It wasn’t like they weren’t messing around, so there was no reason in her mind for them to act like they were being all chaste. She’d caught them, well… Grandma Lewis would call it canoodling, more than a few times in the week since the big guy became a permanent resident.  


        They finally brought a king sized air mattress, and that became an adventure in itself, trying to find one that could take all 500 pounds of him (and the bruise Jane gave her when she joked about safe-sex was totally worth it). In the end they had to special order one, but because of space issues it meant it could only be inflated immediately before he went to sleep and then deflated every morning. Frankly, she was surprised that Jane’s mom didn’t kick them all out already.  


        Her being in Spain on her own lecture tour probably had something to do with that.  


        “Jane’s still sulking, by the way,” Darcy reported around a mouthful of muffin.  


        Thor sighed. “I have told her, several times, that I do not need more space. I have slept in far less comfortable means that those you have provided.”  


        “Yep. I know that… and you know that… but Jane’s feeling guilty.” About everything, even her wasn’t-really-a-break-up-because-we-only-dated-a-hot-minute breakup with Ian. “And the place SHIELD wants to set us up is like ultra-cool.” And back stateside. She saw the pictures, and you couldn’t argue with a five bedroom McMansion and double the funding.  


        “I am happiest when Jane is as well, she knows this.” He swept out an arm. “Whether here, in the barren wastes of Svarltelheim, or the hot fires of Muspelheim, it matters not.”  


        Considering that he’d actually done of whole Svartleheim thing, she had to agree with him.  


        Darcy took the rest of the muffins and put them away for Jane and Eric before starting on cleaning the kitchen. She was halfway through the dishes when she turned around and saw Thor staring at her. She looked down. “I got flour on my butt?”  


        “No.” Thor stood and went to the kitchen, picked up a towel and started drying the dishes in the rack before carefully putting them away. That he did little things like that without needing to be asked was unbearably cute. “I am glad to see you well, Darcy Lewis. It is good to know that your trip to my realm did no undue damage.”  


        She shrugged. “Just wish I could remember. The pictures I got on my phone were awesome.”  


        Through the rest of cleaning up Thor kept throwing glances her way, and it was starting to freak her out just a little. “Okay!” She finally said. “What’s the deal?”  


        “Deal? I do not-“  
“Oh, don’t try the adorable confused puppy routine with me. “ She wiggled a soapy finger in his direction. “I see right through it, even if Jane can’t.”  


        Thor smiled then, and it was full of mischief. “And Jane often says you are unobservant.”  


        “Yeah, I’m unobservant. Who missed the man-shaped shadow in one of her own pictures?” Darcy rolled her eyes. Seriously, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. “What gives? You’ve been watching me like you expect me to break out in song and dance or something.”  


        Something in his expression shifted, and the look was gone. “It is nothing, friend Darcy. Jane spoke to me about Sir Ian, and-“  


        She laughed, she couldn’t help it. “Sir Ian? The guy couldn’t even pull out a chair for me, so definitely not a ‘sir’ anything. Anyway, that’s old news.”  


        Thor was about to say something else when there was a loud knock on the door. “Coming!” she shouted, wiping errant soap off her arms. By the time she got to the door the knocking was back, louder and more insistent.  


        “Jeez!” she huffed as she pulled open the door. “You better be selling the English equivalent of Girl Scout cookies, or…” She trailed off, because there was no way Tony frickin’ Stark was the one on their doorstep.  


        “Man of Iron!” Thor boomed from behind her, and Darcy stepped back as he engulfed the smaller man in a hug that lifted him off his feet. The expression on Stark’s face was priceless, somewhere between ‘is this really happening’ and ‘holy fuck-balls, how is this my life?’  


        “Point Break,” he said once Thor set him down.  


        Thor’s smile was bright as he turned to her. “Darcy, this is Tony Stark, my shield-brother.”  


        “Yeah, kinda figured.”


	2. Chapter 2

        Coulson took a long route back to the Bus, Dr. Streiten’s confession echoing in his mind. He’d been dead for days, and even the doctor couldn’t or wouldn’t give him exact information there. Dead for days before Fury was able to cobble together the right technology to bring him back. He wasn't aware of anything short of magic that could achieve something like that, and the last time they tried to recruit Stephen Strange the contact agents ended up speaking only in iambic pentameter for a week. Besides, there was nothing in their limited research that pointed to the former doctor experimenting with necromancy.  


        His team tried not to hover over him when he returned from Arizona. Ward and May were the most casual and oblique in their affection. Both had seen team members taken and returned worse for wear, if they returned alive at all. Fitz and Simmons gave him a full medical workup before reluctantly letting him leave their hands with pain killers and warnings that would do any doctor proud. It wasn’t the official physical and psychological evaluation he received at HQ, but their care was noted.  


        _I heard what you said.  
_

        Skye didn’t understand the rules of their world. Care and concern were best displayed through official channels of med-checks and evaluations or through the silent communication of hands on shoulders, knowing glances, and the occasional drunken binge. She confronted her discomfort at his kidnapping and torture head-on, dragged them both into the darkest heart of it and asked him to make her understand.  


        _I heard what you said.  
_

        May told him how Skye reacted when they entered the room where he was held. How she folded his arms and tried to soothe him, tell him that they were there and that he was all right. He had a vague memory of her voice, of wanting to reassure her, but it was lost in the slowly receding memories Raina’s machine brought to the fore. His next clear memory was waking up in transport surrounded by the familiar whump of helicopter blades.  


        It was late when he pulled into base, the duty officer sparing him a single quick glance before waving him through the checkpoint. The bank of aircraft hangers were strangely ominous, barely lit by orange safety lights. The bay doors to the Bus were still open, and the lights of the cargo hold shone brilliant and white as the hatch opened. He pulled Lola into her space and killed the engine before just sitting there, head back against the seat. Two hours and he still didn’t know what to do with the information he had.  


        “Late night?”  


        Phil opened his eyes. Melinda was on the catwalk, face impassive as ever. “Just needed to clear my head,” he answered, not moving.  


        He heard her approach, footsteps deliberately loud on the metal stairs. “If you need help with Skye’s hovering, let me know,” she said, slipping into the passenger’s seat.  


        “Skye’s fine.” A few days of seeing that he wasn’t on the brink of a mental breakdown and she would go back to being her normal, slightly standoffish with his government G-Man self. “I doubt they covered dealing with a recently kidnapped team member in high school.”  


        Melinda rolled her eyes. He didn’t see it, but he could feel the disdain from yards away, let alone a few inches. “Just don’t fall asleep out here.”  


        He mock saluted as May stood and went off to her own bed. Or Ward’s, though so far the two of them were careful to appear as nothing but coworkers. He wouldn’t bring it up unless one of them did or it became a problem. He was aware how easy shipboard romances sprung up, especially when the job was as stressful as theirs. Still, he hoped Ward watched himself. He'd hate to have to request another point-man so soon.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

        “Are you sure this is a good idea?”  


        Jane hitched her duffle bag higher on her shoulder.  


        “Because when some genius invites you to his tower, that he controls everything in, and goes on and on about how you’ll never need to leave…”  


        “Darcy.”  


        She couldn’t see her friend, but Jane knew she was rolling her eyes at what she called her “Mother Foster” tone.  


        “Just sayin’, boss lady. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’ll be cut out for a life of harem girl/ lab assistant, but you get restless.” Her voice quieted. “Even Thor hasn’t been enough to wear you out-“  


        “Darcy!”  


        Jane fought the four-alarm blush that raced up her neck and settled in her ears, but it was futile. She was sure she looked like a slightly bruised tomato.  


        The problem wasn’t that Darcy was lying. In the two years she’d known the other woman she’d come to know that Darcy Lewis didn’t lie so much as carefully avoid the truth when necessary. The problem was that she was telling the truth. Since the Aether she was…different. There were times when she didn’t feel like Jane Foster at all, times when she felt like she was about to fly out of her skin (or rip it off entirely). Thor said the effects would fade with time, but couldn’t say for sure how much time was required. It made her nervous, prone to second guessing herself and somehow simultaneously making rash decisions.  


        “So…. Are we gonna do this? Because I think security might ask us to move along if we stand out here much longer.”  


        Said security guards (disturbingly SHIELD-like in their suits that did nothing to disguise the muscle beneath) were giving them surreptitious glances from inside the lobby.  


        When Darcy called her and told her that Tony Stark was standing in her mother’s apartment practically begging Thor to come live in Stark Tower and bring her with him, she thought Darcy was making her special brownies again. When her assistant put the man on the phone and he started on his spiel about Thor and Avengers and how much lab space he had available (and how he was willing to look the other way so long as she kept her budget somewhere in the low millions) she rushed home, trying to remember where exactly she threw her plans for a miniaturized, arc reactor powered Bifrost.  


        She should have stayed at the chemists.  


        Tony Stark in real life was everything he was on television: fast talking, rude, and so sure of himself that it set her teeth on edge. That was something else she didn’t like to talk about, how since the Aether little things that she used to be able to brush off would make her so damn angry. Darcy was good at navigating her new moods, but Thor? Thor hovered, he…fretted, over the damage their exposure to his world did to them. Sometimes she wanted to scream at him that she was all right, that Darcy was all right, that he didn’t need to treat them with kid gloves… which would just prove the fact that he did need to treat them (or at least her) with kid gloves.  


        It was goddamned frustrating, is what it was.  


        Thor went ahead with Stark to New York while she settled everything with her mother, found a house sitter, and she and Darcy packed their belongings and her equipment. Eric decided to remain in England and get some much needed rest and relaxation now that the Convergence was past, though both she and Darcy made him promise to start seeing his therapist again.  


        “Uh, Jane? I think we’ve been made.”  


        There was movement on the other side of the glass-paned lobby. Three more security guards joined the little knot watching them. Something was said, and the five started towards the revolving doors.  


        “Fuck,” Darcy muttered next to her. “I cannot go to jail, Jane.” She could sense her assistant inching away from her. “I kinda have some outstanding warrants.”  


        “You have what?”  


        “In Oregon. Well, one in Texas, but that was so not my fault.”  


        The group of security guards parted at the doors and a tall, slender redhead stepped through. Jane did a double take when she realized she was looking at Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries.  


        “Dr. Foster,” the woman said with a genuine smile as she extended her hand. “It’s a pleasure to see you again.”  


        Jane held out her hand automatically.  


        The other woman’s smile sharpened at the corners. “Tony’s been trying to talk Dr. Banner into a complete renovation of two of our lab floors to give you more room. I had to nix his idea for a small scale collider.”  


        Jane felt her eyes bulge just a little. She knew Stark had more money than God, but to try and renovate floors of his building just for her? She couldn’t imagine it.  


        Pepper turned her attention to Darcy. “It’s nice to see you again, too, Miss Lewis.”  


        Fuck.  


        Darcy was too busy blushing and gaping to respond, and Jane took that moment get Potts’ attention with a sharp shake of her head.  


        “You’re…you’re… Pepper Potts,” Darcy finally got out.  


        Pepper’s expression went puzzled, but before she could say anything Thor barreled through the security and swept all three of them into a hug that lifted them from the ground. “Jane! Darcy! I see the Lady Pepper has come to welcome you to Stark’s Tower.”  


        Jane pulled out of the hug and took Pepper with her as Thor gathered up their bags.  


        “She doesn’t remember me,” Pepper murmured.  


        “I’ll explain later,” Jane said, fighting the urge to wipe her hand down her face. “For now, just go with it.”  


        “Come!” Thor interrupted, ushering them into Stark Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. The story will pick up in the next few chapters, it's just taking a while to set the stage.


	3. Chapter 3

        Phil felt along his hairline, searching for scar tissue he knew wasn’t there. It was becoming a habit; working his fingertips into the skin, trying to find where Fury had his skull removed so he could play with his brain. When Coulson closed his eyes he could hear the machine working furiously over his cries, see the look of horror on Dr. Streiten’s face. He shied away from the pain, pushed it into the darkest corner of his mind with everything else he tried hard not to think about. 

       He thought back to the moments of his life since being resurrected. The little things that at the time were so confusing, that he brushed off as old age creeping in. How had he managed to forget how to pull the slide on an automatic weapon, something he'd had to do hundreds, if not thousands of times? Why could he remember what his grandmother's baked pancakes tasted like (sugar and cinnamon, the sweet hint of apples from the tree she tended for over thirty years), and forget the password to his email? 

        _I was dead._ Phil tried to wrap his mind around that and failed every time. He'd died. Ceased to exist on the mortal plane. All biological functions stopped not for seconds, or minutes, or even hours. For days, maybe weeks, before Fury concocted his miracle cure. How did you give someone back their will to live? He needed answers, needed to know exactly what happened to him, what SHIELD did. 

       The files he was able to dredge up were all heavily redacted, and those that weren't didn't contain anything that felt like the truth. He had a plot in Arlington Cemetery, a marble headstone marking out the beginning and end of his life. A plot that his family had mourned over, a plot that still received flowers every month from Pepper. His hand moved from his hairline to his jaw. His sister damn near knocked him out when he showed up in Spangdahlem. The bruised jaw, split lip, and chipped tooth were worth it when she hugged him and made him promise never to do that to her again. 

       She was the only one of his non-SHIELD associates he was allowed to contact. 

       Something happened to him, and he needed to know what it was before it drove him insane. There were a handful of people who could successfully hack SHIELD and avoid detection. Stark was the first choice, but he was also out. Even if he could trust him to only go after information pertaining to his death and resurrection Stark was one of the people who was supposed to think him still dead. Skye could possibly do it, but she was on his team. Richard’s would do it if Phil could convince him there was scientific value to it. That left… 

       Phil’s thought trailed off. There was someone else, he was sure. Someone who’d already given SHIELD problems on the technical end, but he couldn’t remember who. 

       “Sir?” 

       He glanced up and saw May at his door. “Yes, Agent?” 

       She strode in, dark eyes missing nothing. “How’s your head?” 

       He smirked and forced his fingers from his temple. “I think I’m picking up AM radio sometimes.” When her eyebrow quirked he let the smile slip. “I’m fine, May.” 

       A little of the tension left her shoulders. “Skye’s worried about you.” 

       He knew Melinda, knew that her words meant it was actually Skye who was worried, not ‘Skye’s worried about you but I am too'. If May was worried she’d say so. “She saw something disturbing.” 

       “She keeps asking Fitz and Simmons if they’re sure you should be cleared for duty this soon,” his second in command elaborated. 

       Phil sighed. They’d kept some of the more graphic SHIELD indoctrination material away from Skye out of necessity. She wasn’t an official agent, and in case they had to cut her loose he didn’t want her to be haunted by it. Every agent was given a lecture on torture: what to expect, the likelihood of their capture and the odds of survival. Included were images of agents, some still alive, some dead from their wounds. It was a somber reminder of just how dangerous their job could get and the consequences of being taken alive. What happened to him was mild in comparison. “I’ll talk to her.” 

       May turned and left. 

       When the door clicked shut behind her Phil leaned back in his chair, eyes cataloging his office. Normally he wouldn’t have kept such valuable items with him, certainly not after the first time they nearly crashed. He wondered what exactly made him decide to bring his father’s Roger Harris baseball card on board, or his collection of vintage watches. They were things he usually kept in storage, well away from the potential damage his job could inflict. Ever since coming back to active duty he’d felt the need to have these parts of himself nearby. Knowing what he now did about his miraculous recovery made something sour twist in his stomach. Maybe they were less comforts than they were reminders of someone he’d once been. 

       Someone who died, and maybe hadn’t come all the way back. 

       Skye was where she normally was when their lives weren’t in danger: sitting cross-legged on her bunk, headphones around her neck, focused on her computer. It meant she wasn't overly concerned. When Skye was truly upset she retreated to the SUV, found comfort in the small space. The pose reminded him of how young she was. How young they all were. The average age of a SHEILD agent had dropped from 32 when he was recruited to barely 24. He and May were the old guard now. 

       He waited until there was a pause in her typing to step into her line of sight. “I hear you’re worried about me.” 

       Skye looked up from her laptop, eyes wide and guilty. “No,” she said, unfolding her legs. 

       “Oh.”He turned to go. 

       “It’s just…” she trailed off when he turned back around, face as open as he could manage. She was standing now, preparing for battle. “You’re okay okay?” she asked, expression earnest. 

       He smiled. “I’m fine Skye. I’ve been through worse.” 

       Her eyes went round at that. 

       “I’ve been doing this a long time,” Phil said soothingly. “Things happen in this business that aren’t clean, or kind. You survive them and you move on.” 

       “Move on? You were…” she lowered her voice. “You were begging them to let you die. You just don’t move on from that.” 

       “Wrong people,” he corrected. “If Fury didn’t think I was ready I wouldn’t be here.” 

       She folded her arms. “Fury’s not a psychologist. Besides, I wouldn’t trust Director Angry if-“ 

        _Is Mr. Angry making everyone tremble in fear again?_

       “…AC?! Ward!” 

       It took a moment for him to realize he was on the floor, back against the jamb of Skye’s quarters, and he had no idea how he got there. “I’m fine,” he said, and his voice sounded strained to his own ears. He used the hard metal to get his legs under him, and was standing before Ward arrived. 

       “He passed out-“ 

       “No I didn’t.” He hadn’t lost consciousness, of that he was certain, but what did happen didn’t make sense. 

       Skye stared at him like he just said the sky was yellow. “You weren't talking, you just collapsed-“ 

       “Sir?” Ward controlled the scene like a good soldier, his voice cutting Skye off. “How are you now?” 

        _Embarrassed._ “I’m fine, Ward. Just tired.” 

       “Tired? You just-” 

       “Skye.” 

       It said something about Ward as an S.O. that she stopped talking immediately, but the crossed arms and scowl said he would be hearing about it later. 

       Coulson took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I'm fine,” he repeated, aware of Ward's assessing gaze. If he wasn't careful he'd end up in medical with Simmons and Fitz doing everything short of dissecting him. He slid past Ward and out of Skye's quarters and almost stopped when he saw May standing there. From the expression on her face (concerned, cautious... was that fear?) she saw everything. 

        Shit. 

* * *

       Living in Stark Tower was a cross between a vacation to Disneyland and a lunar colony. 

       On the one hand, everything she and Jane needed was at their fingertips. Craving for cannoli? Jarvis had the number for the best bakeries in New York on speed dial. Run out of clothes? The AI had them scanned and a selection of clothing in their exact size (along with an embarrassing collection of underwear) ready for their perusal and ordering. Which resulted in Jane giving Tony and Jarvis a chewing out about boundaries. A chewing out that left Tony Stark (he of the never shutting up if he was conscious) speechless. It wasn't until Thor reminded Jane that much the same was done when she visited Asgard that she calmed down. Darcy was just enjoying the fact that she was living in a fucking penthouse, and all she had to do to earn her keep was stop Jane from going off the rails. 

       On the other hand, the isolation was driving her fucking nuts. 

       They didn't really leave the building because there wasn't really a reason to leave. The climate was a constant seventy-six degrees, the humidity was perfect, and the air had that freshness that only came with a very expensive filter. Or else Stark had crews working non-stop bottling fresh alpine air and shipping it back stateside, you never knew with him. She’d yet to see a maid, but the place was always spotless. She wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one night and find her room being scrubbed clean by elves. 

       All strangeness and inability to not say something completely inappropriate aside, Stark was actually a softie. Either that or he had absolutely no idea how much things cost. She couldn't imagine letting anyone stay in a completely pimped out specifically for them floor just because. And he could totally shut up about how he just happened to include a fire pit when he was remodeling the top of his building after it got blown up and that it had absolutely nothing to do with him hoping that Thor would move in, he wasn't fooling anyone. 

       Which all boiled down to her working not just on wrangling Jane anymore, but helping with the Dr. Bruce Banner. The Dr. Bruce Banner Jane idolized as an undergrad. The Dr. Bruce Banner who happened to turn into a not-so-jolly green giant when he got angry. It hadn't happened in the two months since they moved in, but there was still a worrying amount of protocols just in case. She started carrying king-sized Snicker bars around whenever she was in the labs. No one could stay mad when there was chocolate to be eaten. 

       And then there was Jarvis. 

       Darcy didn't consider herself a tech-head. She did enjoy making coding as convoluted as possible because she liked watching people cry (she blamed Diane), but that didn't mean she could build a circuit board from scratch. Still, walking into the common floor (and leave it to Tony Stark to not give his guests a common room, but a common fucking floor to kick around in) and being greeted by Jarvis made her squeal. 

       A lot. 

       Jarvis was everything her CompSci instructors said he was, and more. The first time she recognized exasperation in Stark's AI she started to understand just how complicated Jarvis was. He didn't require set inputs to make a decision, he just made one. He reminded her when her favorite shows were on, made sure their kitchen was always stocked with her favorite ramen, and discretely warned her of approaching prankees. 

       Darcy was, admittedly, in love. 

       “No.” 

       She looked up from her musings and hid her Starkpad. “I'm not doing anything.” 

       “So you haven't been in here trying to break through my security protocols so you can get control of the manufacturing machinery to build Jarvis a body?” Stark squinted at her. 

       Darcy blinked owlishly behind her glasses. “Nope.” 

       The look Tony gave her said 'yeah, right', which was the only warning she got before he reached around her and snatched the Starkpad from under the pillows. 

       “Hey!” She tried to get it back, but he was already halfway across the room. “That's between me and J!” 

       “I'm afraid I was required to alert sir after you bypassed the third firewall, Ms. Lewis,” and boy, did Jarvis sound put out. 

       “She shouldn't have gotten past the second,” Tony scrolled through the pad. “I set it up to be an infinite loop. You'd have to go through five hundred permutations before you got close to the right sequence, and then bounced right the hell back out.” 

       “Yeah, well, it wasn't that hard.” A total lie. Stark's security made SHIELD's look like it was designed by a three year old, but she was nothing if not persistent. “Couple UDP pivots and I was out.” 

       Stark sputtered, then looked at the pad and back to her, eyes squinted in a way she was starting to recognize. He was thinking. 

       “It took you three days to get through my programming.” 

       Darcy fidgeted. Three days, with a little help from Jarvis on how to get around some of the more esoteric scripting Stark used. They were having fun, now they were both busted. Fuck, she hoped this didn't cost her room and board. She couldn't go back to living off a college drop-out's salary. 

       “J, we still have that opening in IT?” 

       “Mr. Daniels is still holding interviews, sir.” 

       Darcy blinked, opened her mouth, and blinked again. No way, there was no- 

       “How'd you like your own office?” 

       Well, how about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, things are beginning to come together. Sorry for the slow start, I just need everyone in place. Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Sorry about the extremely long wait between chapters. It's been an... interesting... few months. Hopefully I'll be able to get into a regular updating pattern. At least once a month, but I make no promises. Thanks to everyone who has stuck around for this story.

        “… and that was that.”

        “Hmmm….” Darcy kept her eyes glued on her computer screen.  


        Three months working for Stark Industries taught her several things. The first being that working for Stark Industries was like working just about anywhere else…until it wasn’t. Case in point: one Anthony Edward Stark barging into her office first thing in the morning and launching an hours-long explanation of his life pre-Iron Man and why that resulted in a destroyed mansion, an arrested Vice President, and a reemerged terrorist organization.  


        “Wait, were you even listening to me?”  


        Darcy rolled her eyes. “Yes, I was listening.” She set the computer to running a software patch. “You were a dick bag to someone who obviously idolized you to go bump uglies with some chick you just met and he spent the last ten years plotting his evil revenge.” She cocked her head. “Which doesn’t explain why you’re here…in my office…sharing your soul.”  


        Stark’s head lolled on his shoulders. “Why does no one care what happened to me? What do I have to do for you people?”  


        There was a tinge of real hurt behind the words and it made Darcy give him her full attention. Tony Stark whined, he moaned, he threatened to have your brain removed and replaced with a positronic one (which she wasn’t too worried about, since Jarvis assured her that he hadn’t perfected the complex human-computer interface yet), but there was never real emotion behind any of it. “Tony?”  


        He was fiddling with one of his own inventions: a rubix cube that randomly changed configuration if the puzzle wasn’t solved within a minute. A gift from the last time she told him to spend his time pissing someone else off instead of micromanaging her work in IT. He was staring at it, and as she watched two of the colors switched position. He’d been talking for the better part of two hours and he’d yet to solve the thing even once.  


        “Hey,” she coaxed when he kept squinting at the toy like it held the secrets to the universe. When he looked at her she leaned back. “You almost died.”  


        “Yeah. Well, no…”  


        “Yes,” Darcy said firmly. “You almost died a couple of times. You saw people get killed. You thought you saw Pepper get killed.” She frowned. “And what do you mean, no one cares what happened?”  


        He mumbled into his chest.  


        Darcy blinked. It felt like all the air was sucked out of her office.“How many people have you been telling this story to?” It had been a year. How many people had he told in a year and no one cared?  


        “Banner,” he said sullenly at last. “He fell asleep.”  


        Wow, that wasn’t what she would have expected from Dr. Banner. Then again, nothing in their limited interactions made her believe he had a tolerance for other people’s shit. “So you decided to tell me and see how I reacted?”  


        He tossed the cube on her desk.  


        “Oh. Okay. Well… you’re alive,” she started. “Pepper’s alive. The bad guy’s dead… I don’t see a downside, other than the whole extraordinarily traumatic experiences part of it.” Speaking of which… “Have you seen a shrink? At least for the whole panic attack thing?” When he didn’t respond immediately she reached for her phone. “If you’ve been making anti-anxiety meds in the chemical engineering department I’m calling Pepper.”  


        Tony pulled out a small bottle and tossed it to her. Darcy caught it and frowned. “Arnold Kell?”  


        He grimaced. “The minute Tony Stark walks into a psychiatrist’s office SI stock drops fifteen points, conservatively. Arnold Kell is a nobody from nowhere who is a severe shut in that can’t possibly meet face to face with a psychiatrist.”  


        “So….” She squinted at the label. “Ativan?”  


        “It works.”  


        Well, that explained why productivity in Research was down. “How often are you taking this?” She shook the bottle in his direction.  


        “When I need to.”  


        Darcy set the bottle on her desk. “You know, I have some experience with mental illness…”  


        Stark’s expression went from morose to deer in headlights. His eyes flicked over her office before settling on her Hello Kitty clock. “That the time? Gotta-“  


        “Sit.” She pulled out her I’m-not-taking-shit-from-you-right-now-Diane voice, and was moderately surprised when he followed directions. She took a deep breath. “After Thor’s brother blew up our town I couldn’t sleep. When I did finally nod off, I had nightmares.” She settled back in her chair and pushed her glasses up her nose. “After Greenwich it was worse. I kept seeing buildings blowing up, evil elves chasing me… world ending shit. Jane made me see a therapist after the fourth time he caught me coding in the middle of the night.” As she spoke his expression mellowed, going from wary to slightly (painfully, hopefully) understanding. “And yeah, it sucked balls the first few times, but then I actually started talking about things, and it helped.” So she didn’t wake up every night anymore, maybe best three out of seven, and she stopped looking at the sky waiting for it to burst open and pour nasties whenever she left the tower or her apartment. It was a work in progress.  


        “So talking to you and Bruce doesn’t count?”  


        Good Jesus _fuck_ … “Professional help. From someone who actually went to school for this shit. You need someone to fix security holes in your insanely structured AI, I’m your girl. Your brain is somewhere I refuse to tread.” Darcy sighed. "Anyway, now that we have that out of the way, I need a favor."  


        "You already talked me into letting you keep your pet in the Tower. You're not building Jarvis a body."  


        "But it's Christmas!"

  

        He would never admit it, but Phil breathed a sigh of relief when his request for extended leave for his team went through. A solid week of doing whatever it was his agents did when they weren't on the clock. Skye was still on the Bus, settled into the backseat of the SUV with a promise that she wouldn't spend their entire downtime there. Ward and May booked plane tickets to parts unknown, and after their encounter with Lorelei he doubted they would be meeting up any time soon. Fitz and Simmons were in the UK visiting family.  


        He decided to do the same.  


        Three knocks, a short rasp, and four more knocks in a rhythmic sequence and he heard a muted shout to come in.  


        Natasha's apartment was a study in contrasts. The white walls and carpet were made more stark by the dark charcoal furniture and black built-in cabinetry. Black and white photos marched in patterns along two walls. Random splashes of color (an orchid in a red clay pot, a print of vibrantly pink cherry blossoms) kept it from being overpowering. It wasn't until you walked on the carpet that you discovered it was plush enough to swallow toes, or that the couch was almost criminally comfortable.  


        “You look good,” Natasha said after he let himself into the apartment. Her eyes flicked over the healing scrapes and bruises. “Actual said they had you for going on three days.”  


        He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it by the door. “The worst of it was the food.” He could feel some of the tension leave his shoulders. If there was one place he felt completely safe, it was Natasha’s apartment. “I think the TV dinners dated back to the place’s construction.” He eyed her carpet and toed his shoes off. “How’s Barton?”  


        Natasha’s shoulders didn’t stiffen, but there was something about her that clenched at his question. “Still at the Ranch,” she answered as she poured two glasses of wine. “He’s doing better.”  


        Phil nodded and took a glass. Clint wasn't the only agent still reeling after being controlled by Loki. At least his psychosis never became as severe as Selvig's. "He sent me an email. They want to put him on preliminary ops next month."  


        "It'll do him good." She took a drink and started towards the kitchen. "Help me with the aloo gopi?"  


        They talked as they cooked. About Phil's assignment and if half the rumors about everything they'd encountered in the past few months was true (disturbingly so). How the real Steve Rogers compared to the one remembered by the history books (unerring sense of rightness: yes. Ultra-conservative bastion of American values: not so much). She was regaling him with how Rogers gave a senior agent a dressing down that nearly brought the man to tears when he joked about the effectiveness of female agents in the field when a yowl sounded from deeper in the apartment.  


        Phil paused in poking the potatoes. "Please tell me he's not loose."  


        Natasha's smirk made his eyes widen before she shook her head. "Safely locked in the guest room."  


        He didn't let out a sigh of relief, but it was a close thing.  


        Phil hated Natasha’s cat, and for all intents and purposes, Shadow hated him. It wasn’t a violent hatred: that the animal reserved for Barton. Shadow’s hatred of him was more subtle, psychological. If a cat had a ‘die in a fiery inferno’ expression that was the one he leveled on him whenever Phil set foot in the apartment. The cat stalked him, found some place to perch that was out of reach and just stared at him for hours. Natasha joked that it was all in his head, but she managed to find some reason to keep Shadow locked in a room more often than not when he visited.  


        Dinner was eaten and they were sitting on the couch when Coulson took a deep breath. "I need you to do something for me."  


        "I didn't really think this was a social visit." The words were bland.  


        "SHIELD sealed my medical files. When I requested them I was told I required Fury's go-ahead." Natasha didn't respond to the revelation, not even a lifted eyebrow. "You knew."  


        "I knew you were dead, Phil. Fury wasn't shy about letting everyone know who died on the Helicarrier." She half turned. "Clint didn't take it very well. He didn't really start getting better until they said you were at the Guest House."  


        "Did you ask?"  


        The look she gave him was withering. "You were in a coma for months. They didn't think you'd come out of it, so they never bothered to change your status. From what I've heard, you waking up at all was a miracle."  


        He grimaced, and Natasha's expression sharpened. "What did they do?"  


        "That's what I need you to find out," he pushed. "Quietly. I know you're not IT, but if anyone can slip in and out of those files undetected, it's you."  


        Phil kept his expression neutral. He didn't need 'Tasha digging for information on why he needed information. She was the best person he knew when it came to ferreting out lies, and he didn't need her knowing about his episodes. Episodes that were becoming more frequent.  
Finally, she settled back into the couch."Flattery will get you everywhere, Phil," she smirked and raised her glass.

  

        Darcy sat in her rental car listening to the engine tick as it cooled. It was nine months since her last visit home. Nine months of living in England with Jane, training a new intern, dating a new intern, saving the world from space elves (and really, no matter how she thought about it, space elves made her chuckle, just a little, when it wasn't making her have a panic attack), and living with an alien Viking the Norse declared a god. Three of those in a penthouse designed by Pepper Potts.  


        All in all, it was an interesting nine months.  


        When Diane called and asked for her to come home for a visit Darcy was skeptical. Portland hadn't been home in a long time, and the last time her mother tried to get her to come back it was to tell her she had cancer. They hadn't really talked since the whole evil space elves incident, just a quick text from her mother about the cancer going into remission for the second time. Stark was totally cool with her leaving for a while, and she suspected it was to give himself some breathing room when it came to her attacks on his security. One day she was going to get through and get her hands on all that sweet, sweet machinery. She and Jarvis had a color scheme and everything.  


        When a curtain twitched Darcy braced herself and stepped out of her car. It was just for the weekend, she reminded herself as she marched to the door, bag in hand. Just for the weekend. She could avoid trying to kill her mother just for the weekend.  


        “Hey,” she called as she walked in.  


        The house hadn't changed much since her last visit. Some of the pictures were of summery landscapes and there were cream slipcovers on the furniture instead of dark blue. She wondered if the guest room was still that God-awful shade of Pepto-Bismol pink. She really hoped it wasn't.  


        “You're early,” Diane said from the living room.  


        “Flight came in early,” Darcy answered, giving her mother a once-over. She was wearing a headscarf, so she couldn't tell how much of her hair had grown back. Her cheeks didn't look as hollowed out as last time and there was actual color in her face, all good signs. “How've you been?”  


        “Fine.”  


        “Okay then.” Darcy lifted her bag. “Guest room still pink?”  


        “Lilac.”  


        Oh, there was a God. “Awesome. I'll go put my stuff up.”  


        Darcy breathed a sigh of relief when the door to the bedroom closed behind her. The room really was lilac, with a dark purple border dotted with butterflies. Diane must have been in a good mood when she decided to redecorate. Darcy didn't unpack, just left her bag on the other side of the bed and went back downstairs.  


        Diane was sitting at the dining room table, staring off into space.  


        “Aunt Ginger at the store?”  


        “Gynecologist.”  


        “Oh.” Darcy headed to the kitchen. “Want some tea?”  


        “How's New York?”  


        Darcy filled the electric kettle and plugged it in before dragging down two cups. “Pretty cool. I told you I got hired by Tony Stark, right?”  


        “You said he was using you in IT.”  


        “Yep.” She opened a cabinet and browsed through the tea selection. The rose hip Diane favored was right out front, but where was the damn Darjeeling? “I have an office and everything.” Well, it was a tiny closet that she tacked a printout of her name to (along with 'Mistress of the Universe'). “How's that for a college drop-out?”  


        A thin arm reached past her and plucked a box of Darjeeling from the back of the cabinet.  


        “Thanks,” Darcy turned to their cups. “Stark's an ass, by the way, so you were totally right about that. He also has a nice ass, so points to me.”  


        “Are you seeing anyone?”  


        Darcy blinked. Her mother was staring at her in a way that was bordering on creepy, like she could see inside her head. “No,” she drawled out. “Kinda busy with work and all. I'm still helping Jane when I can, and she's still crazy, so it's a balancing act.”  


        Her mom's face scrunched. “You're not seeing anyone?”  


        “Ah...no?”  


        “You're sure?”  


        “Preeeety sure,” Darcy drawled. “I dropped Ian almost as fast as I picked him up.”  


        “The English one,” her mother clarified, still staring at her.  


        Darcy backed away and moved the cups away from her mother. Really, on my first day back? “Yeah. And working for three geniuses doesn't leave me a lot of time to socialize.” She had a sneaking suspicion that between the three of them Tony, Jane, and Bruce might just spontaneously decide to become supervillians. Either that or save the world. It was a fifty-fifty shot.  


        Darcy poured water into her cup and added two bags when she felt fingers digging into her scalp.“Did you cut your hair?”  


        “No. I trimmed it last month.”  


        The fingers kept roving, feeling through her hair in a way that was quickly becoming uncomfortable. “Hey!” Darcy swatted her mom's hand away from her head. “What are you, part monkey or something?”  


        “I'm looking for it.” The fingers were back, digging into her scalp. “There are marks. There have to be!”  


        Darcy ducked from under her mother's hands and stepped away. “Marks from what?”  


        “I told you! I told you those fascists would do something to you! Why didn't you believe me?”  


        She took a deep breath. This was not what she expected when her Mom asked her to come home for the weekend. “When is Auntie G getting back?” she asked, because her aunt was better at dealing with Diane in general, especially when she was like this. Darcy frowned at her mother’s left hand, where the other woman kept touching her thumb to each finger rhythmically. “Mom, when was the last time you took your Haldol?”  


        “It’s not my goddamned brain!”  


        “Okay… okay…” she reached deep down and dug out her Dealing With Diane voice. “I don’t work for fascists, Mom. I work with Jane. She’s an-”  


        “But you did!” Her mother’s eyes were wide. “You did and they did something to you! You don’t even remember!”  


        Darcy dug out her phone and texted 911 to her aunt. This was turning into a four-alarm episode.  


        Diane's eyes narrowed on her fingers. “What are you doing?”  


        “I’m texting Aunt Ginger,” Darcy answered slowly and calmly. “Why don’t we just sit down and wait for her to get back?”  


        “No!” Her mom took off running.  


        “Shit! Mom!” Darcy ran after her, surprised the other woman was able to move that fast. _Please don’t please don’t please don’t,_ she chanted to herself. The last thing she wanted was a repeat of her freshman year of high school. She burst through the door to her mother’s room. Diane was on the other side of her bed holding a picture frame to her chest. No blood, no screaming. “Mom?”  


        Diane held the picture out like a shield. “They came here and took everything that had him in it,” she said. “They said we weren’t supposed to talk about him, that it was national security and they wouldn’t say why.”  


        She was smiling.  


        There were air balloons in the background and she was smiling, her arm around a stranger’s waist. He was older than her, hairline receding, but handsome. He was smiling, his arm around her shoulders, eyes bright and happy. She remembered posing for the picture, remembered asking an elderly couple to take a picture of her before the balloons were all in flight, but she was alone that day. Jane was busy killing herself writing her paper and Erik had gone who knew where, so she decided to go to the fair by herself. “Who…” she came forward and took the picture.  


        “See, I’m not crazy. They took everything, but I kept this one, hid it until they left.” Her mom was crying, and if she wasn’t already freaked out that would really freak her out, because Diane had cried only a handful of times in her memory. “They… they did something to you. You brought him home last Christmas and he met everyone and now we’re supposed to pretend he doesn’t exist but he did!”  


        “Last Christmas.” She flew in by herself last Christmas. Had an argument with her mother and had to sit in the car for fifteen minutes before she calmed down enough to drive back to her hotel. “Who is he?”  


        “Phil,” Diane said. “Phil Coulson.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed :)


	5. Chapter 5

      When Darcy was thirteen she went through the entire Webster’s dictionary looking for a word to describe how she felt. At first she settled on ‘absence’. It was a nice, multi-syllable (well, more than one counts as multi in her book) word. ‘A state in which something wanted, expected or looked for is not present or does not exist’ summed up how she felt about her life until that point. She wanted a mother, but what she got was Diane. She wanted friends, but the few she scrapped together in the sixth grade seemed to turn against her when she started growing boobs and they stayed flat as boards (which, really… did they think it was a blessing to have to run with those things?). ‘Absence’ seemed just right for the girl whose mother disappeared three days ago with only a note and a wad of twenties to get her by. It wasn’t until she got to the end of the dictionary that she found the perfect word. It wasn’t multi-syllable, but it felt… right.         

      Void: a feeling of want or hollowness.         

      Absence implied something that was once there, something to be missed. Void had no expectations on something having been there. Void was perfect, empty. It took another few years until that feeling - that gnawing emptiness in her center - started to fill up. She filled it with friends, with projects and college, with Jane and Erick and intergalactic aliens, even with SHIELD. Slowly, surely, the void stopped being less of this gigantic thing and more a little, annoying itch that didn’t matter so much.         

      Now the void was back, and this time it had a name. There was a Phil Coulson shaped hole in her life. A hole that everyone seemed to know existed but her, and she couldn’t wrap her head around it. How the hell did you just forget a person? It was enough to make her wonder if all her mother’s theories about the government were true. How could you trust people who could literally erase a person from your memory?         

      After the big Phil reveal Darcy’s vacation went just about how she thought it would. There was Aunt Ginger, who took more pounding than Darcy would have thought before she admitted to meeting the aforementioned man at the Christmas party two years ago. There were stilted dinners, uneasy breakfasts, and lunches where she practically ran out of the house just to get a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t that her mother was particularly Diane during the visit, it was just… strange. Strange to be in a house with people who knew something about her that she didn’t know about herself.         

      “So he…died?”         

      Ginger worried her fingernail. “That’s what you told us. Someone from SHEILD came all the way out here to tell you. A man with an eye patch.”         

_Fury._         

      “You wouldn’t leave your room for almost a week afterwards. Then your friend Jane came and took you. She said you were both going to the funeral.”         

      At the mention of Jane’s name Darcy’s stomach sank to her shoes. She could see Fury, uber-spy and general asshole that he was erasing her memory. But knowing Jane was in on it made her feel sick.         

      “And that’s the last time you saw me?” Darcy pressed.         

      “You moved back to New York,” Ginger clarified. “You said you were staying with friends, then you called and said you were moving back to New Mexico for work.” Ginger shrugged. “You never spoke of him again, so we just thought you were trying to move on.”         

      “And then the goon squad raided the house!” Diane called from upstairs.         

      Darcy was willing to take Ginger’s word on what happened (two black SUV’s parked in the driveway, and both women were politely, if forcefully, asked to turn over any documents, photographs, or other items that might link one Darcy Lewis, college dropout and SHIELD employee with Philip Coulson) rather than Diane’s recollection of jack-booted thugs practically holding them at gunpoint.         

      Ginger put a steady hand on hers. “What are you gonna do, DD?” she asked.         

      Darcy shrugged. “Honestly?” She huffed. “I have no fucking clue.” 

* * *

       

      He couldn’t remember her face.         

      That more than anything else made his heart clench. He could remember the geometry of her body (light brown hair, narrow hips, square shoulders and long limbs), but he couldn’t remember what her eyes looked like in moonlight, the way her mouth moved as she ate.         

      Phil thumbed through his small collection of photos. Audrey smiled out from almost all of them. She was beautiful, there was no denying it, but seeing her in person made some of his memories seem... unbalanced. He remembered the details of the operation they met on, recalled conversations that made him laugh, genuinely laugh, for the first time in a long time, but after the operation things became muddled. Did they meet in Seattle for his vacation, or Portland? Did she have allergies (something he was always aware of since his sister was deathly allergic to peanuts)? Did she enjoy going out, or was she a homebody? These were questions that should have been important, that were vital to sustaining a relationship, but the answers just... weren't there.         

      With a sigh Phil tried to remember everything he could about Audrey. She was born on October 15, 1968. Both her parents were still alive and well at a senior living facility outside Portland. She was second chair in the Portland Philharmonic-         

_But not first chair on the Philharmonica…_         

      He latched onto the remembered words, tried to chase them to their source. The harder he tried the more ephemeral they became, slipping back to wherever they emerged from. He sneezed and told himself he wasn’t smelling baked ziti and mango shampoo.         

      The agent pulled out a small leather-bound book and wrote the phrase down in his own cipher. There were other words there; fragments of things said by a voice that came and went more and more. A voice that at times was just as familiar as his. Sometimes the words were accompanied by flashes of dark, coffee-colored hair, the impression of a wicked smile. He reread the words. They were playful, a bad pun on oral sex (specifically with him), proprietary. His fingers flexed, dark hair catching on his nails…         

      Phil jolted. Audrey’s hair was light brown, almost blonde in certain lights, not dark and curling. His mind flitted back to a dream weeks old. Of Tahiti and pale hands, dark hair and blue, pained eyes. The woman in his dreams and the one in his disjointed recollections were the same, she had to be.         

      Now he needed to figure out who she was.         

      He eyed his terminal. Through SHIELD he could find anyone in the world, with or without a picture. He had access to every DMV database in the country. He could narrow his search by sex, eye and hair color; narrowed further by searching near places he was stationed in the last two years. He could find his mystery woman, or determine if she was just a dream.         

_Great, you've turned into Sitwell._         

      Phil groaned. He'd never used SHIELD for personal reasons, not like that. He remembered the dressing down he'd given Sitwell when he found out the other agent was using SHIELD resources to check up on his girlfriends while he was in the field, how he felt it was an invasion of their privacy.         

      "AC?"         

      He looked up. Skye was in the doorway. "We got the intel?" he asked as he returned the photos to the folder in his desk.         

      She nodded. "Waiting on you." 

* * *

       

      “How was your mom?”         

      Darcy leaned back on the ultra-comfortable couch in their new living room. The couches at her mom's place weren't ratty, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it was amazing the quality a few extra zeroes at the end of a price tag could buy. She was so… _so_ … going to thank Stark for convincing Jane to move to New York. It was shame she had to kill her former boss, though. Maybe she could claim emotional distress. God knew dealing with Stark was enough to make anyone go postal. “Same,” she muttered. “Remission looks like its sticking.”         

      Jane’s face went all full of sympathy and Darcy scowled. “How’s working for Stark without the Magnificent Darcy as a buffer?” she needled.         

      She tuned out a little as Jane started on how much of a genius/d-bag/genius Stark was. She didn’t really care. If Jane could handle 200 pound goons she could handle Tony Stark, and Thor could handle Iron Man. Besides, it wasn't like he treated Jane like one of his actual employees. He at least had a healthy respect for the scientists. He treated Darcy like she was going to run away with Jarvis and elope with him (and shut up, she totally would if she could but he didn't need to act like it). Around the time Jane started in on how awesome it was to be working with _the_ Bruce Banner Darcy blurted out-         

      “So, who’s Phil Coulson?”         

      The fact that Jane stopped talking without additional prompting was more damning than the look of ‘oh, holy fuck’ that crossed her face. She tried to cover it by tucking her hair behind one ear and finding a copy of Astronomy very interesting.         

      “Who?” Jane finally choked out.         

      “Phil Coulson,” Darcy repeated. “Older guy, ‘bout yea high.” Her hand hovered half a foot over her head. She was sitting, but she thought the sentiment was clear.         

      “I don’t know,” Jane hedged. “I think… wasn’t he the guy who worked for SHIELD?”         

      Darcy narrowed her eyes as Jane looked everywhere but at her.         

      “He took your IPod, too.” Her boss settled on the opposite couch. “You wouldn’t shut up about it.”         

      “Hmmm…” Her IPod, bedazzled case and all, was in her room. She remembered it going missing with all Jane’s stuff the first time SHIELD came knocking, but not how she got it back. Or why she had over 100 jazz songs that she couldn’t remember downloading. Songs she knew.         

      It was only one small part of a very large puzzle that she was coming to truly hate. So many things were starting to make sense. The weird as hell exit interview SHIEILD put her through when she jumped ship with Jane. The careful Facebook questions from her family about her relationship status (like they couldn't see 'Single' on her page). The way SHIELD completely ignored her during the whole the-world-is-ending-because-of-evil-space-elves crisis. How Jane and Thor kept staring at her when they thought she wasn't paying attention. Hell, even her computer getting a metric ton of coffee poured on it when she asked to use it in the infirmary.         

      Jane was practically vibrating with ‘something’ when Thor came in. The other woman looked so relieved that Darcy fought the sudden urge to hiss.         

      “Hey Thor,” she called before Jane could say anything. “Who’s Phil Coulson?”         

      His eyes went directly to Jane and Darcy shot to her feet. “I knew it! What’ve you been keeping from me?” She shouted. “Who is he?”         

      An hour later and she was staring at them both like they just declared themselves rulers of Mars.         

      “Bullshit.”         

      “Darcy-“         

      “Bullshit!” She jumped up from the couch and started pacing. “I did not let some Asgardian ho-beast play with my brain!”         

      Darcy wanted a do-over. She wanted to press some shiny red button and start her entire day over, from the moment she woke up, looked down at her My Little Pony socks, and said fuck it, she needed answers.         

      “They were the only terms my niece would agree to.” Thor was way to calm in her opinion. Then again, for all she knew getting your mind wiped by some crazy death goddess happened every other Tuesday on Asgard. “You did it to resurrect the man you loved.”         

      She made a sound deep in her throat. “What the hell kind of sense does that make? She just ups and magics a soul out of nothing?”         

      “Darcy-“         

      “And you!” She whirled on Jane. “You let some shifty government asshole talk you into not telling me about going into space!”         

      “Director. Fury.” Jane enunciated.         

      “No excuses!”         

      Both of her friends started talking at once, trying to explain, but Darcy wasn’t listening. She fisted her hands in her hair, trying to remember anything about Coulson. The only image she had was of the smiling man in the picture, arm around her waist. There was nothing else.         

      “Okay,” she said when she reached the point where her hair felt like it was sliding out of its roots. “Okay.” She sat down, arms folded over her breasts, face fixed in her most severe ‘do not fuck with me’ scowl. “You are going to tell me everything you know about me and Coulson. Every date, every fight, food preferences, favorite shows… everything.”         

      Jane and Thor looked at each other, and it was really annoying how they could do the whole married couple eye conversation thing already. After several seconds Jane leaned forward.         

      “You guys started seeing each other when Thor showed up the first time...” 

* * *

       

      Everyone looked small in a hospital bed.         

      Skye wasn’t that big to begin with, but dressed in a green gown, face slack around the intubation tube, she was tiny. The room was quiet except for the hiss of the respirator and the nurses’ chatter down the hall. Phil shifted in the hard plastic chair near the bed, trying to find a better position before giving up and leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.         

      She was lying in a hospital bed because of him.         

      _Not you,_ he could practically hear Melinda. A person was only responsible for what they did; nothing more, nothing less. Nine times out of ten he would agree with her, but not today. Not when a life that just started was hanging on by the barest of threads. Hard on that thought came another that made his hands clench into fists. He was distracted in the field, he'd been that way from the beginning of the op. He'd let his personal problems get in the way of the mission, and now the youngest member of his team was fighting for her life. A fight she was losing by the hour.         

      As if his thoughts summoned her, Melinda slid through the door. “Here,” she said, handing him a cup of coffee. He held it, surprised by the warmth that seeped into his hands. He hadn’t been aware he was that cold.         

      “She’s dying,” he said quietly.         

      “I know.” Melinda flexed hands with knuckles still red from the beating she gave Quinn. It hadn't gained them anything but satisfaction that the man who hurt their teammate suffered.         

      Phil hung his head. “She trusted me.”         

      “She thought like a field agent.” Melinda’s voice was neutral, words only slightly slurred from the painkillers Simmons insisted she take. “Because of her the mission was a success.”         

      _He wasn’t worth it,_ the words hung between them. “The doctors say there’s nothing they can do. She’s drifting away.” Skye didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve to be gut shot, to bleed out alone in a basement, to have machines breathing for her after nearly three hours of surgery.         

_No one does._ The thought came from his first SO. There was no deserve when it came to violence. There were only those who dealt it, and those who suffered.         

      Phil took a long swallow of his coffee, felt it burn its way down. The pain helped clear his head. “Fitz and Simmons hear back from Archives?”         

      “They’re sending the cube now. It should arrive in four hours or so.”         

      He nodded. “Good. I want Skye prepped and ready for transport as soon as delivery is confirmed.”         

      Melinda examined him with her eyes, and he let her. This was probably the most out of sorts she’d seen him in a long time, if ever.         

      “They may not find anything,” she said carefully.         

      “They’ll find something.” He knew it. Fitz and Simmons would move heaven and hell to save Skye. They all would. 

* * *

       

      "Darcy... will you be all right?"         

_Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh..._ she felt it bubbling in her chest, trying to fight past the lump in her throat and cushioned by the sour feeling in her stomach. There was a whole year and change of her life just...gone. Erased and overwritten like a CD. She thought back to Puente Antiguo, to Los Felix, trying to find the places where this person, this person that Jane and Thor said she'd loved enough to mouth off to a goddess for, once existed.         

      "Darcy?"         

      "So everybody knew?" She looked between the two of them. "Stark, Pepper, Banner, fucking Steve... you all knew and didn't think to mention it?" She didn't include Romanov and Clint, because they were spies, and spies kept secrets, but Steve? Mr Doesn't-Lie-Doesn't-Swear-Perfect Rogers knew and never even hinted? On that she called bullshit.         

_It’s not like you see him every day,_ a traitorous part of her brain supplied. Steve was busy working for the man, and only occasionally stopped by the tower. Still, the man couldn’t lie his way out of a wet paper bag with a hunting knife.         

      Thor stood. "I take responsibility for their keeping this from you, Darcy." At least he had the decency to sound contrite. "There was no way to know how my niece’s enchantment would work. Magic of this kind can be very volatile, and all the danger falls on those who are part of the spell. I first feared that if you remembered each other, her work would be undone, and the Son of Coul returned to Valhalla.”         

      _Holy shit._ “You’re telling me I can kill this guy just by remembering him?” What if he was dead somewhere, right now?         

      Large hands settled over hers. “Fear not, Darcy. I have spoken with those more knowledgeable in these arts than I in the months since his return. Hela’s terms were very clear, the debt already paid in full. Unless you killed him yourself, there is nothing you could do that would endanger the Son of Coul.”         

      “You know his name is Coulson, right?” she hedged. “The whole ‘son of’ thing kinda went out a few centuries ago.” Besides, she highly doubted the guy’s dad was named Coul.         

      Thor’s smile was warm. “I’ve noticed it puts your people at ease, that I appear less knowledgeable than I am.”         

      Darcy looked between her former boss and her spirit brother. “Okay…” she breathed out. “I won’t kill you both for keeping this from me… but this isn’t over.” She had some searching to do, and Jarvis loved breaking into shady government databases almost as she loved watching him do it.


	6. Chapter 6

      _…first soul to leave… the universe rushing past in a swirl of rainbow colored light, galaxies blurring into each other…your consent…Decide now…_

      Phil jerked awake, hand splayed across his chest. He was in his quarters on the Bus, currently parked at Marshall Airfield and awaiting orders. He sat up with a groan. There was a dull ache in the center of his chest where his scars were, an ache that radiated through to his back. When the pain faded to a tolerable level he glanced at his clock. 

      3:42 AM. 

      Coulson rolled out of bed with a grimace of distaste. His undershirt was soaked with sweat, and he could feel more of the same drying on his arms and face. That made four times that week he woke from nightmares he could barely remember. All the dreams gave him the same sense of loss, of misplacing something. His brain was trying to tell him something, and judging by how insistent the nightmares were, it was important. 

      He headed to his bathroom and took a quick shower, sluicing off what felt like pounds of dried sweat before slipping into plain pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. He pulled up the security feeds on the Bus, unsurprised when it showed no recent departures or arrivals. All of his agents were on board, and had been since before midnight. His stomach rumbled, reminded him he hadn’t exactly filled up at dinner, and he headed for the small onboard kitchen. 

      The Bus was quiet this late at night. They were locked up tight on a secure military base, so May called off her usual round of late-night patrols. The only lights came from the security floods tracing pale blue paths along the floors and walls until he entered the main cabin. The ambient light was almost blinding for a moment, until he adjusted and saw a dark head near the floor. 

      Skye was wearing her normal lounging clothes, sitting cross-legged in the space between the couch and table, laptop open and running one of her ever-present programs. He gave her as thorough an examination as he could without seeming to. Two months had gone by since her brush with death. Two months since they broke into a secure facility to recover an experimental serum that, as far as he knew, had only been administered to one other person before. Her skin color was normal, eyes their usual color and intensity. There was a small plate of cookies and half a glass of orange juice on the table in front of her, so she’d been there for some time. She glanced over his shoulder and gave him a tired frown. “Can’t sleep?” 

      He’d waited the first week since they stormed the Guest House. Waited for Fury to strip him of command, to be placed in a holding cell awaiting trial. When nothing happened, when Fury hadn’t so much as ordered them back to the Triskelion for a dressing down he felt dread pooling in his stomach. Whatever the Guest House was, it was so buried that Fury couldn’t risk calling him in for an official or unofficial bitching out, and that scared the living shit out of him. 

      “A lot on my mind,” Phil answered. 

      “Same here.” Skye stretched, leaning her head against the couch seat. “Maybe being a night owl is a side effect of the GH-325.” 

      He might have believed that, if Skye hadn’t been a night owl from the moment they met. He glanced at her laptop. “Working on something?” She nodded. “I’ve been looking at every mention of alien landing and abduction that I could find, cross-referencing it with skin color. Did you know that they go back over five thousand years?” She sighed in frustration. “It’s like man invented written language just to report, ‘Hey, something fell out of the sky over there’.” 

      “With what we found out at the Guest House, it wouldn’t surprise me.” He could remember every detail of the creature he found there, recall the peculiar shade of blue of its skin and the purple of internal organs floating in some kind of preservative fluid. Something tickled at the edges of his memory. Something that said he knew more about the Guest House than he could remember. 

      Skye worked her shoulders. “It’s gonna take days to get through everything, AC.” She let out a flustered grunt. “Probably weeks.” 

      He settled on the couch and reached for a cookie. “This isn’t part of our assignment.” 

      “No, but we need to know.” She leaned forwards, elbows on her knees. “They pumped you full of whatever you pumped me full of. Not that I’m complaining,” she added hastily when his face fell. “Simmons was really clear on the whole ‘holy shit going to die in the next minute’ thing.” Skye ran a hand through her hair. “I just wished the facility was still standing, that we got some intel out of it before everything blew up.” 

      “So do I.” Getting information out of their servers has been secondary to his goals. A single hard drive from one of the many machines onsite could have given them invaluable data, but they were short on time and the serum was the only thing that mattered. 

      They were unique, the two of them. The only two he knew of who were injected with alien DNA. The only two who could be considered more (or less, he always feared less) than human. So far, Skye didn’t show any negative effects: no memory loss, no loss of kinesthetic sense, no unexplainable changes in mood or behavior. That she wasn’t sleeping was troublesome. “Have you been having nightmares?” 

      She grabbed the last cookie. “No…no more than usual. Simmons said that nightmares are usual after suffering trauma.” 

      Phil could remember the first time he was shot in the Rangers. How there were nights when he woke up clutching his leg, sure there was a bullet lodged in the flesh just below his hip. “You dream about being shot?” 

      Skye nodded. “Mostly. Or of dying.” She shuddered, arms folded around her middle. “Or of one of you guys getting shot. It’s stupid.” 

      “Not at all.” He slid off the couch and settled next to her on the floor. “It took four or five months for the nightmares to fade after I was shot the first time. I still get them on occasion. A lot of agents do.” 

      Skye bumped her shoulder against his. “Guess it’s like getting hazed, right? Just a lot more terrifying.” 

      He was about to say something. About how, if she’d gone through normal channels, her first time getting shot would have been in a controlled environment. She would have worn a vest, but it would have happened. It was part of training, a way to break through the shock of being shot the first time so when it happened in the field, they would be better prepared. 

      Then he was somewhere else. 

      It was cold, and dark, but someone was beside him. He looked down and pale hands rested on his knees. He followed the line of the arm up, passed over pale shoulders and dark hair and finally, finally, to a pair of blue eyes. _Silver linings, Darcy._

      “AC?” He blinked, and he was back in the Bus. 

      “Okay, you just totally spaced on me right now,” Skye said, staring at him in concern. 

      He shook his head, tried to play it off. “I guess the sleepless nights are catching up to me.” 

      Skye’s expression said she wasn’t convinced, so he went for a tactical retreat. “You should try to get some sleep,” he said, standing. 

      She nodded. “Only one zombie allowed on the Bus at a time.” 

      Phil felt her eyes on him until he passed up the stairs. When Coulson reached his office he went to his desk and pulled out his notebook. He 

      wrote the words down, fingers trailing over what he was sure was his mystery woman’s name. 

      _Darcy._

      

      New York hotdogs were frickin’ amazing. 

      When Darcy told Jarvis she had a craving for a chili dog he recommended Katz’s Delicatessen, and she immediately balked at paying five dollars for a single hot dog. The AI talked her around, and damn, but she had to admit that it was just about worth it. Add the fact that Stark had a delivery deal with them so she didn’t have to deal with traffic or lines to get her food, and it was totally worth it. 

      “J. You. Body. So need one,” she said around a mouthful of food. Chili, red onions and Swiss cheese, who knew? “Hey, think we could rig it up so you can taste things? Because you need to taste this.” Her hotdog was a gift from Thor: juicy on the inside, casing just crisped on the outside, with a chili she could happily mainline for the rest of her life. It was only fitting that she share the experience with her new best friend. 

      “I’m afraid Mr. Stark has forbidden me to allow you access to any manufacturing machinery,” the AI responded with an almost wistful tone. 

      “We’ll talk him into it.” At the least she could needle Tony about it the next time he called. She was nothing if not persistent. “How’s the debugging going?” 

      Instead of answering Jarvis pulled up status bars on the fourteen computers they were running diagnostics on. Stark Industries was an industry leader, and that meant every competitor was trying to get their hands on formulas, or prototypes, or anything that could get them at least on equal footing, which meant industrial espionage. In her seven months working in the IT department she’d written code, patched security problems, and dealt with more viruses than she ever thought possible. 

      The newest was a data miner working its way through legal. 

      As jobs went, she’d had worse. Taking care of cyber security problems for Stark Tower wasn’t what she imagined doing when she dropped out of college (and oh, how it burned her coworkers that she didn’t have a BS or MS or PhD but could run circles around just about all of them), but it was definitely awesome. Great pay, great benefits, her own office and access to a company car. On top of everything else, the sheer amount of work she had to slog through gave her a perfect excuse for staying away from the labs, Jane, and everyone else who were lying liars who lied. 

      After Jane and Thor confessed she spent days locked in her room with Jarvis, slogging through SHIELD encryption, searching for Philip Coulson. When she saw the picture of him on file she squinted hard. She remembered him vaguely from when the goon squad came and stole all of Jane’s research (and her mysteriously reappearing IPod). Philip Coulson wasn’t her usual type. He was a little on the short side, for one, and she usually had a strictly six feet and over requirement. Then there was his age, and the fact that he was an actual member of the Men in Black who went around kidnapping people and stealing equipment. 

      At least she didn’t have to deal with the whole ‘hey, that guy everybody liked who’s dead? Not so much’ situation the way Thor did. Apparently, while he simply failed to mention this person she was supposed to have been madly in love with to her, he’d also declined to tell anyone else that Coulson was alive and well. That conversation ended with Stark in full armor and a new hole in one of Pepper’s newly acquired art pieces. Even Darcy had to wince at that one, because the look on Stark’s face when it happened said he was going to be in the doghouse for a very, very, long time. 

      Pepper was a peach, though. She arranged for Darcy to get her own apartment, safely away from Jane and Thor. Apparently Stark had not only built five floors just for the Avengers, he also had a whole host of ‘temporary living quarters’ that she was the only person living in. Her new apartment was nice, if a little impersonal, but it kept her away from Jane and Thor while she sorted out how she felt about the whole situation. 

      Besides, she didn’t miss listening to them getting it on. Both of them were screamers. 

      “Do you always dance when you eat?” 

      Darcy meeped and spun around. Her boss was standing in her door, one eyebrow raised as he glanced from her half-eaten lunch to her face and back. She set her chili dog in the Styrofoam container. “Kinda?” 

      Patterson rolled his eyes. “How far are you?” 

      Darcy cleared her throat. “Six are all clean.” She gestured to the stack of towers waiting to be returned. “Other eight are just waiting in line. Me and J are still working on the server, though. There’s some kind of wonky metamorphic madness going on in there.” She blushed. “HR needs to talk to the owner of 11F. They’ve been going to porn sites. Like _really_ going to porn sites.” Not that she had anything against anyone’s particular kinks, but GILF porn? There were just some things she didn’t want to contemplate. 

      Her boss’s mouth quirked. “Is 11F the infection site?” 

      “Don’t think so.” Whatever virus infected the legal server wasn’t something caught from the internet. It looked too neat, too contrived. “I think the infection was deliberate. Like uploaded on-site from a USB deliberate.” 

      Her boss ran one gnarled hand over his forehead. “Any idea yet what it’s looking for?” 

      “Data on the Ibura and Kaft lawsuit.” 

      The sound he made was somewhere between a hiss and ‘Jesus fuck why me’. “How fucked are they?” 

      “…well?” It depended, on just how much of their information was mined and how much was able to make it out before anyone caught on. Without a clean infection point there was no way to tell. “Verrons is really anal about keeping everything hard copy, so it might not be that bad.” 

      Her boss made another disgusted sound and roamed out of the office. She didn’t envy him his job. Wrangling fifteen computer geeks directly (and everyone at SI New York who touched a computer indirectly) had to be hard on the liver. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! So new chapter. Hope you like ^_^


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year everybody! Finally, there is an update! Also, I noticed that I posted a section of this story a chapter too early, so it has been moved to its proper place in this chapter.

_“There is pandemonium in the Capitol tonight following what witnesses are calling an assassination attempt that left four dead and twenty-seven others injured. Security cameras captured a harrowing scene as armed gunmen attacked what appears to be a government vehicle that then fled through the streets of Washington DC. Jake Tapper has more.”_

Darcy frowned at the newsfeed on her screen as pieced-together images showed the newest insanity unfolding in the world. It was Friday, officially closing time for the IT department and good little Darcys everywhere. 

_“…at least ten highly trained individuals dressed as police officers led the attack that came to a dramatic conclusion on 17th Avenue. Witnesses say that the SUV was flipped upside down by some sort of explosive device, and as you can see slid several yards before finally stopping,”_ the anchor said as he half turned, and the camera zoomed in on a badly damaged black SUV just being loaded onto a tow truck. _“There is no word yet on the identity of the driver or why he was targeted. The attack has led to a tightening of White House security…”_

She shook her head and finished shutting down her office before swiping her iPod. There was a bottle of Patron in her apartment with her name on it, and she’d been good the whole week. She even managed not to give Jane the stink-eye when she had to go up to the labs to check out her private server. 

Her phone chimed as she locked her door. **Dry cleaning done early. Pick up tonight?**

She frowned. The sweater she dropped chili on earlier in the week wasn’t supposed to be done until Monday afternoon. Patron or the sweater her grandmother knitted for her. Decisions, decisions. **Pick up tomorrow?**

**Closed all weekend.**

Darcy blew a raspberry at the screen. She refused to use the high-end dry cleaner that Tony sent everything to, which meant potentially suffering the vagaries of missing dry-cleaning. If it was ready, better to pick it up. She checked her watch. 5:04. **Will you be open until 6?**

**Yes.**

She sighed and headed for the elevators. Pick up dry cleaning, pick up dinner, then Patron. 

In hindsight, she should have held off on the Patron. Dealing with a hangover without Jane was a torture she could do without. 

* * *

“Who is she?” 

Phil looked up from his desk. “Who?” 

Garret made a sound halfway between a snort and a sigh. “You’ve been staring at those watch pieces for ten minutes. Either Russia’s about to invade China, or you’re brooding over a woman.” 

Coulson set down the small pliers he’d been holding. “Am I that transparent?” 

“Well…” his friend drawled. “You always did have a terrible poker face when it came to women.” He strode farther into the room. “She must be something, to take you off your game right now.” 

“Yes.” The word slipped out before he could swallow it back. 

They were in the middle of hunting down the Clairvoyant, possibly the single largest threat to SHIELD to appear in the last ten years. He should have been running over their infiltration plan, should have been overseeing secondary and tertiary checks on equipment, but all he could think about were a pair of sky-blue eyes. _Darcy._

Garret went from amused to downright gleeful. “I didn’t think I’d see the day.” He flopped down in the chair across from him. “You’re twitterpated.” 

“What is this, Disney hour?” Phil asked as he packed away the pieces of his watch. Years of practice kept the blush fighting its way up his neck under control. He sniffed to show what he felt about Garrett’s conversation topic, and his hands fumbled while putting his spring bar tool into its pouch. Lasagna, his brain supplied at the hint of tomato and cheese that filled his nose. 

Garret’s laugh was entirely too pleased. “Just calling it like I see it.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “It’s the kid, isn’t it? The one we blew the installation for.” 

“Skye?” Phil frowned. “You think I’m seeing Skye?” 

The other man leaned back. “Hey, no judgment. She’s cute and feisty.” 

“Garret.” 

“A little young, though,” his friend barreled on, and Phil could feel heat rising up his neck at the thought of his Darcy, despite his attempts to control it. She couldn’t have been much older than Skye, now that he thought about it (and thinking about her possible age was one of the things he found himself routinely avoiding). Garrett’s eyes went bright with joy at his blush. “Oh man, Coulson, you swing for the fences when you go to bat, don’t you.” 

“It’s not Skye,” he repeated, putting on his blankest expression. 

John grinned. “So, not the kid. It’s not the scientist.” His eyes went round. “May?” he chuckled. “You’re a brave man, Coulson, to fool around with the Calvary.” 

“Melinda will kill both of us and use our balls as Christmas ornaments if she hears you,” Phil informed him. “Well, your balls. I think I’ve earned the right in her eyes to be buried intact.” 

Garret laughed again, but he glanced over his shoulder to make sure the coast was clear before leaning in. “Seriously, though. I haven’t seen you like this in years. Don’t tell me there’s one that got away from the G-Man.” 

Coulson rolled his eyes. “I still hate that nickname.” 

“But it suits you.” John leaned back in his chair. “Last I heard you’d sworn off the fairer sex, Phil.” His expression was downright devious. “Don’t tell me you’re batting for the other team.” When Coulson started to protest he rode over him. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. So…Fitz? I’d say Ward, but I know how his flag blows.” 

Phil breathed deeply. “It’s no one on this plane, John,” he said slowly. “Can we just drop it?” He glanced at his computer. “We are five hours out from an op where our mark might literally be able to see us coming, and you have nothing better to do than screw with me over some imaginary woman?” 

John’s expression shut down, his shoulder’s bunching, just like Coulson knew they would. All joking aside, if there was anything Garrett was, it was professional. “Cocked, locked, and ready, drill sergeant,” he reported. “Ward and Trip handled equipment and everyone else has been double checking our route in and extraction. We’re as good at it gets.” He leaned forward. “You’re really not bagging the kid?” 

Phil sighed. “No.” 

The other man examined him with his eyes before leaning back, his smile going just a little hard. “I believe you, Coulson. No one getting his dick wet regularly would be as locked down as you. Especially not with that sweet young thing.” 

“I’m going to crush your larynx.” 

* * *

“There has got to be a better way to do this.”  


Stark rolled his eyes. “Something’s up with SHIELD, and since they’re not talking…”  


Tony trailed off, which made Darcy roll her eyes. It was three hours since ‘Captain America taken into custody’ became the hottest news in America. She was still trying to wrap her mind around it. “You know Fury’s gonna blow a gasket when he finds out you hacked them…again.”  


“If he’d talk to me I wouldn’t need to hack him.” Tony explained. “That’s why we’re using your protocols.”  


Great, she was the one who got to look forward to Gitmo.  


Stark looked at something off screen. “Gotta run,” he said before the connection terminated.  


Darcy leaned back in her chair. Her very comfy, very expensive but in no way expensive or comfy enough to risk extraordinary rendition chair. “Thor damn it.”  


Don’t get her wrong, she loved working for Stark Industries. She even felt righteously vindictive when she got to patch the holes someone set in Jarvis’ code to make it easier for SHIELD to slip in and out unaware. Something was happening, though. Jarvis said the person being chased in Washington was Director Fury, and she couldn’t imagine the sheer balls it would take to try and assassinate the head of SHIELD. That was on top of the whole Captain America thing. Who the hell arrested Captain America? Especially when every witness they could find talked about how he was being attacked, not doing the attacking? No one was willing to say they were the ones who took him into custody, and if answers didn’t start showing up soon she feared Stark really would put on the suit and find answers himself.  


“J?” Darcy frowned at her computer as the screen flickered. “You all right, dude?”  


“I’m sorry, Ms. Lewis, but my systems appear to be compromised. Attempting to find the source of the intrusion.”  


“What!” Darcy spun around. Jesus fuck, why was this her Monday? “Give me a feed, J. What’s happening?”  


Jarvis had long since shown her the visual representation he and Stark worked out for his systems. It was amazing how much it helped to see his inner workings as a collection of moving geometric shapes, even if in reality they looked nothing like what he displayed. Now it looked like something dark was worming its way through the cloud that made up Jarvis. The virus showed up as inky blackness that spread thin tendrils through his systems. Each one touched flared briefly, then went red.  


“J, I need you to isolate all unaffected systems,” Darcy ordered.  


“Already done,” the AI answered. “The infection is adapting to my protocols and overwriting them.”  


“Fuckity fuck! Repartition. Cut off everything infected.”  


Jarvis was silent for a second, then, “repartitioning and quarantine failed. The infection is spreading to critical systems and attempting to circumvent security on the satellite uplink.”  


_Shit._ “J, hard shut down, all systems, all servers, Tower wide.” Tony was gonna kill her when this was over.  


“Ms. Lewis…”  


There was more red than blue in his systems now, the cloud nearly double in size. “Do it, J.”  


Her office went dark.  


It was freaky when her phone answered itself, but since Jarvis was the only one who could do that Darcy was willing to forgive him. “Ms. Lewis, the Tower reported that you authorized a complete network shutdown ninety seconds ago in response to a cyber-attack.”  


“Yeah, J,” Darcy groaned as she racked one of the newly cleaned computers and hooked it up to her screen. Why the hell was Stark in Washington when she needed him? She set the Ethernet card on the desk next to it. “What was the damage?” Before Jarvis could answer her the door to her office burst open.  


“Lewis! What the hell did you do?”  


Sweaty was not a good look on her supervisor. Jackson looked like he just ran up twelve flights of stairs. A possibility, since Jarvis controlled the elevators. “Shut down Jarvis,” she answered, trying for flippant and falling on mildly constipated.  


“You shut down the entire network. All servers are offline. Half the Tower’s systems are on standby. I have twenty different departments jamming up my lines asking what the hell happened.”  


“J?”  


“At approximately 2:17 pm the Tower’s systems were compromised by a malicious AI,” Jarvis explained. “Ms. Lewis shut down all integrated systems in an attempt to control the spread and stop it from reaching critical systems.”  


“What?”  


“Which is why I'm linking one of the infected computers to our newly cleaned PC and booting right about now.” Darcy switched on the desktop and sent it into safe mode as her office phone started ringing. She flicked it to speaker without looking up from the boot log. 

“Lewis, if you broke my Tower-“  


“Jarvis just got hacked.” The computer was booting up slow, too slow for her liking. “Please tell me you didn’t actually take off yet.” 

“Would you like me to explain the situation to Sir, Ms. Lewis?” Jarvis asked.  


“Please.” She worried her bottom lip. The computer was still booting up. STARKTech was better than that. “Use small words.”  


When the screen finally went to something that wasn’t the black screen of death she frowned. “What is this, the Matrix?” The computer screen showed nothing but cascading green lines, not even cool pseudo-glyphs, just random green lines that spooled and spooled. “You making any sense out of this?”  


Jackson leaned over her shoulder. “Hell no. Any idea what it’s doing?”  


Darcy turned to her diagnostics. “Looks like whatever it is has finished overwriting hundreds of J’s protocols.” She smirked as it pinged for an outside connection and got nothing. “Rat in a trap, dickhead,” she muttered.  


“Jarvis said it was going for the uplink before you shut him down,” Tony said over the line.  


“The attempted breach was unsuccessful,” Jarvis sounded… not shook up, but wary, which was fucking terrifying in and of itself. “The program appears to have originated from an artificial intelligence, one considerably older than myself.”  


Darcy and Jackson turned to each other. “Older than you?” he repeated.  


“From what I have been able to ascertain, the basis of the program utilizes IPL.”  


Darcy blinked. “Who the fuck still uses IPL?”  


“Simple, direct, and to the point,” Stark said.  


“Yeah, it’s a real peach,” Darcy muttered.  


Jackson pinched the bridge of his nose. “Have we got an infection point yet?”  


Jarvis answered. “The initial infection point is console 3D in Research and Development. It appears Dr. Indira is trapped on elevator 4." 

Stark made a sound. “J, have security detain Indira. Quietly.”  


“A security team has been dispatched.”  


Darcy leaned her head on the back of her chair. “Tony, not to be pushy, but please tell me you’re in the suit and flying your ass back here now.” 

This was a goddamned mess, one she didn’t want to deal with. Her friend was sick, the Tower was running on backup power, there was a real chance they’d have to clear every single computer attached to the network to make sure no trace of the hostile AI was lurking in some subroutine somewhere and she was trying seriously hard not to freak out. Someone had attacked Jarvis himself. Someone with enough skill to develop an AI that almost got the better of the one considered to be at the edge of the cutting edge.  


“One minute out,” Stark said, and thank God. “Hope IT is up for overtime.”  


Darcy glanced at Jackson and fought the urge to curse, long and creatively. Mondays. Swear to Thor, she hated Mondays.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! We've finally caught up with Captain America Winter Soldier and nearing the end of Agents of SHIELD season 1. For anyone keeping track, this chapter takes place before and during End of the Beginning. I'm assuming that the events of CATWS took place over five days from the initial attack on the Limurian Star to bringing down the helicarriers, so here we start on day two and end on day 4.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm still alive ^_^ I apologize for the long...long wait between chapter. I honestly have no excuse for that. Hope you enjoy and thanks for hanging in there.

                Darcy was cold.

                She shivered and drew her legs up to her chest, reaching for a blanket that wasn’t there. She blinked her eyes open, and then slammed them shut with a moan. Harsh light stabbed into her brain, sending jagged spikes of pain through her head.  Darcy rolled onto her stomach and her stomach kept rolling, vomit climbing up the back of her throat. She felt blindly for the edge of the bed and threw up.

                With her stomach empty she felt a little better, but not much. Enough to notice that Shit Wasn’t Right. She covered her eyes with one hand, blocking out the worst of the light, and looked down. What was left of her lunch was splattered across the floor. A concrete floor.

                _Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…_ She backed away from the edge. Too soon there was no more room to retreat and she fell off the other side, landing on her hip with a pained grunt. She’d been on a cot from the look of it, something low to the floor with a thin mattress. She kept scooting back until her side hit something solid. The room spun around her and she fought down the urge to vomit again. This was wrong, this was so fucking wrong.

                She passed out and woke up back on the bed.

                This time, she wasn’t nauseous, but the lights were just as bright and clashed with a headache trying to tear her forehead apart. Darcy glanced over the side of the mattress half relieved to see the vomit scrubbed away, half freaked that someone came in, moved her, and cleaned without her knowing anything. The room smelled like bleach, wet cement and old water.

                Part of her was screaming _this is not happening,_ but she told that part to shut up because this obviously _was_ happening. When she was officially hired by SHIELD she’d read through the gigantic folder of material (okay, Jane made her read it, but still) that they told her was standard for all employees. There was a lengthy section on how to handle being kidnapped or otherwise held against one’s will. She remembered reading it, and then reading it again, then calling Jane and asking her exactly how likely it was for her to be kidnapped just because she happened to work for a government agency as a glorified coffee jockey. That conversation was the first time she seriously considered quitting.

 _Okay, remember what the packet said,_ she thought, curling into a ball. _Stay calm, don’t say anything. Don’t eat anything. Don’t complain. Don’t ask. Just wait. They’ll find you, just wait._ She didn't work for SHIELD anymore, but she liked to think that what little bit she did know about the way they worked, on how to hack their systems, on Jane's research, was enough for them to mount a rescue mission. That wasn't counting Tony 'I-collect-people' Stark. Or Thor, who she knew from prior experience took her personal security and mental well-being very seriously.

                She reached up for her necklace. The silver cello was gone. So were her charm bracelet, glasses, shoes, and coat. Whoever took her left her in her skirt and sweater, but neither was really designed to keep someone warm for more than a few minutes and didn’t care very much about climate control.

                Darcy sat up and swung her legs over the side of the cot, keeping her feet clear of the wet patch of floor. The last thing she remembered before waking up was heading home with her Italian takeout. Takeout that she’d refused to have Jarvis deliver because she wanted to _live_ in New York, damn it. After the fifteen hours she spent slaving with the rest of the tech grunts starting the task of clearing Jarvis and the integrated Tower systems she deserved braciola, cannoli and a good hit of the industrial-strength smog that was New York City post rush hour. She’d been thinking about taking a vacation away from Jane and Stark’s particular brand of insanity. Someplace nice. Sunny. Someplace she could wear a bikini and hire buff cabana boys to rub sun block on her back while she and Jarvis designed another body. She was a few blocks away from the Tower when someone grabbed her from behind, lifted her off her feet. There was struggling, then…nothing. Not until waking up wherever she was.

                The room, her _cell_ , was small. Concrete floor, concrete walls, with floodlights beaming down from the ceiling. The cot was in the center of the room (no blankets, not even a sheet), and across from the cot, there was a chair. There was a single drain in the floor, and her mind skittered away from all the reasons not vomit related they thought _that_ was a necessity.

                The sound of metal grating against metal made her flinch. She expected the door to open. Instead, a small slot near the floor slid up and a tray was pushed through. She stared at it: two pieces of bread, a paper bowl of reddish soup that smelled like tomatoes and beef, and a Styrofoam cup of water. Her mouth was dry, painfully so, but she wasn’t drinking or eating anything these people gave her.

                Darcy reached up, felt the place her necklace should be. She hoped she’d pressed the panic button.

                _They’re coming,_ she told herself, pulling her legs to her chest and stretching the skirt as far as it could go. Thankfully she’d decided to wear leggings beneath her skirt, so she wasn’t as cold as she could have been. _They’re coming_.

 

  
                Tony Stark was not a happy billionaire.

                When he started the whole Iron Man thing, the mission was simple: find and destroy as many illegally sold Stark weapons as he could. Maybe take down a terrorist organization or two if he had the time, especially any linked to the Ten Rings. Somehow, that mission evolved into saving the world both on and off the battlefield. Renewables, clean energy, and recovered illegal arms became the things he specialized in, none of which seemed to make him any friends, anywhere. The government was pissy because he stopped manufacturing weapons, and he was _still_ fighting four lawsuits leveled by the DOD for not completing his contracts despite giving refunds on all non-delivered goods. He was the only name making any headway in clean energy by virtue of the arc reactor. The number of companies who had active bounties on any and all tech specs for his little miracles was only surpassed by the number of lawsuits being lobbed at him from all sides claiming he had stolen most, if not all, of the tech. The only firms that weren’t gunning for him were grassroots startups doing everything short of launching their designs his way via ACME catapults to get funding.

                He got it: Stark Industries was making waves no one else wanted to surf, waves that could and would change the world in the next decade. That in itself was nothing new.

                Still, attacking Jarvis was going too far.

                “Sir, units 1 through 20 are reporting all drives replaced,” Jarvis said through his headset. “Facilities Services have manually reset all integrated and non-integrated systems. We are ready to reboot Tower systems.”

                “Okay, J,” Tony muttered as he attached the last few connections. Three of his worker bots waited patiently as he pressed a hand to the main power switch. “Wakey, wakey.”

                The hum of the server room regaining power surrounded him as the racks came to life, followed by a whiff of ozone.

                “How’s it looking in there?” He asked as he packed away his tools.

                “Sir, server integrity appears to be 100%.” The hum of the servers increased. “Initiating transfer of the last clean SI New York backup from the SI Los Angeles data hub. Time to completion, five hours, thirty-nine minutes.”

                “Okay guys, good work,” he reached out and pet one of the repair units that drifted closer.

                “Mr. Stark?”

                Tony rolled his shoulders. The head of his facilities team (Mike? Mark? He should have listened to Happy and made them wear ID badges) was at the end of the row.

                “Leak’s been fixed,” he said with false cheer as he handed off his tool box to a repair bot. He tried not to look _too_ suspicious of the employees drifting to the main doors of the server room, each followed by a helpful (and watching) repair arm. “J’s gonna do basics down here.” He glanced around. “Where’s Patterson? How’re we doing on the clean sweep?”

                The facilities head looked up from his StarkPad. “Last report was most of the computers upstairs were finished and waiting to be added to the network. If we bring in our last three reserve staff we should be up and running by 10 AM.”

                Provided they really were all clear. He rolled his shoulders and headed to his private elevator. The doors opened with barely a hiss at his approach. _Good, J’s back in control of integrated systems._ “Keep in touch. Let me know when he’s ready to start handing out network access.”

                When the doors to the elevator closed Tony leaned back against the polished wood and closed his eyes. After everything he’d lived through the past few years he stopped believing in coincidences. There were no odds that around the time he plans to head down to Washington and give Fury a piece of his mind someone completely unconnected uploads a malicious AI capable of taking on Jarvis. Not after Captain America also finds himself on the wrong side of a pair of handcuffs.

                “Tony?”  
                “J’s back in control, Pep.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “We should be back in business around 10 AM, sooner if we keep everyone on board.” Seriously, he was going to have to give the whole tech department a raise. At least buy them lunch for the next six months.

                Pepper’s face appeared on the smooth bit of glass that made up the manual control panel of the elevator. She looked tired, and he felt his hands clench before he willed them to relax. Pepper cut short her vacation upstate when the Tower went down and spent the night handling damage control. “I’ve got Row and Hawthorne looking into Engleton. So far she hasn’t said anything.” She started to say something else, but the phone rang. “I have to take this.”

                The feed cut off.

                “Sir, I have detected an anomaly.”

                Great, what now? “Shoot, J.”

                “Mr. Patterson has made several calls to Ms. Lewis' phone and sent four texts requesting she return to assist in the final stages of clean up. The signal from Ms. Lewis’ phone has been stationary for the last two hours at the corner of East 41st street and Madison Avenue.”

                _Shit._ “J-“

                “Based on Ms. Lewis’ bank records, she purchased an order to go at roughly 7 this morning. I am searching NYC traffic cameras to track her movements.”

                Before the elevator reached the top floor Jarvis pulled up several screens showing Darcy walking swiftly with a brown paper bag. As he watched she paused and pulled out her phone. A van obscured the view of the camera and in less than five seconds pulled away again. There was no sign of Darcy, only the bag with its contents spilling across the sidewalk.

                  _No. no, no, no, no, no._ Tony pressed a hand to his arc reactor and shook away the smell of dirty water and gunpowder.

                “Sir, I am attempting to find another camera connected to the network with an unobstructed view,” Jarvis said. “I have also taken the liberty of contacting the New York Police Department, as well as Thor and Dr. Foster. Would you like me to ready the Mark VIII?”

                “Yeah, J.”

               

_HYDRA._

                If it wasn’t for the fact that he just blasted two drones out of the air Phil would have thought it was a joke. A very bad, very morbid joke, but a joke. HYDRA was destroyed 70 years ago by everyone’s estimation, all of its leadership killed or captured in the raid Captain America led on its stronghold. What few loyal members remained were mopped up by the Allied forces. Now he had an agent on lockdown, another a possible sleeper, and coms that were dead silent except for a single world.

                _HYDRA._

 _She’s not safe._ The thought made his stomach sink, made blind panic race through him for a moment before he tamped it down. Hydra wouldn’t be interested in the former lover of a field agent, even one as highly placed as he was. He hoped.

                “That… that can’t be real, can it?”

                Skye’s voice shook him out of his daze.

                Phil looked up. Fitz and Skye were both staring at him, twin expressions of fear and loss on their faces. Garret’s jaw was clenched, the muscle standing in stark relief as he stared at the screen.

                “We have to find out what’s happening on the ground,” Phil said quickly. “Skye, see if you can get us a line, I don’t care if it’s a manned station in Siberia, someone out there knows what’s going on.” He headed for the cage and stopped. “If you have anyone listed for Protective Services, you need to call them and let them know not to trust anyone. There’s no telling what HYDRA is capable of.”

                Skye ran a hand through her hair and turned to the console, fingers flying as she started working on the signal.

                “Fitz.” Fitz was staring at the screen, eyes wide as Hydra spelled itself out again and again. “Fitz.” He waited until the younger man turned to him to continue speaking. “Can you disable the autopilot?”  
                “No. It’s hardwired into the flight controls. We cut it and the Bus falls like a stone.”

                _Wonderful._ “Then focus on figuring out where we’re headed. I’m guessing a SHIELD base, but we can’t be sure.”

                Fitz practically ran towards the small lab and his tools.

                “What about us, boss?” Garret asked.

                Phil frowned. “I’m going to talk to May. You trust everyone on your team?”

                “With my life.”

                “Good. I need you to see if you can get in touch with Trip. If we can get eyes in the Hub, it’ll let us know how the fight is going.”

 

        

                Darcy didn't know what time it was, and hat, more than anything else, irked the hell out of her. She probably already missed Big Bang Theory (she loved the show only because Jane loved to troll the hell out of it. The rivalry between Culver and Caltech was almost as bad as the one between Caltech and MIT). From the hollow feeling in her stomach, she guessed she’d been held for several hours. She was still a little queasy from whatever they drugged her with, so her estimation might be off, and she hoped it wasn't by that much.

                In the meantime, she’d done some rearranging. The cot was against the wall now, as far away from the door as she could manage. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be deep enough asleep that they’d be able to get in without her knowing. The chair was bolted to the floor so she left it where it was. Some time ago the slide on the door opened up and a black-gloved hand removed the tray. The smell lingered, made her stomach cramp in a reminder that she hadn’t eaten since the two donuts she stole from the breakroom that morning. Her bladder was cramping as well. She had to pee, badly, and there wasn’t a toilet in sight.

                “Um…hello?” She called. “I need to use the euphemism!”

                No one answered.

                “Bathroom!” And really, anyone who didn’t know Dr. Seuss cartoons was evil, plain and simple.

                When there was no response she eyed the drain warily. She’d had to squat in uncomfortable places before: in the woods, once behind her friend’s apartment when they got locked out and she _really_ needed to go. There weren’t any visible cameras where she was, but Darcy was sure they were there and she refused to give some perv a thrill.

                _Shit, shit, shitshitshit…._ She went back to her cot and sat down. So far no one had attempted to talk to her, not even when she began rearranging things. She half expected at least a ‘stop’ when she pushed the cot against the wall. Either she was really paranoid, and they didn’t actually have cameras watching her every move or her kidnappers wanted her to _think_ they didn’t have cameras watching her every move.

                Either way, she wasn’t going to the bathroom anytime soon.     

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I have a partial timeline of the events between this fic, Agents of SHIELD and Winter Soldier that I hope won't make things too messy and explains why our heroes were absent during the whole HYDRA thing.  
> -The attack on Jarvis happens the day before the helicarriers launch, which waylays Stark's investigation into what's happening with Steve.  
> -Darcy was kidnapped early the following morning (the morning of the HYDRA reveal) before anyone knows anything.  
> -I'm assuming Cap's assault on the Helicarriers takes place sometime midmorning (9-10) based on Pierce's comment about the 'push' happening in the morning.  
> -Though I know Turn Turn Turn starts at night, I really think that's confusion on the part of the show. It makes no sense for the Bus to be hijacked before the sun rises, considering they are flying out of Pensacola, FL, and HYDRA doesn't reveal itself until mid morning. It also doesn't make sense for Coulson's team to have been out of contact with base for the length of time it would take between the initial assault on SHIELD and sunset. I'm assuming that once shit started going south at the Triskelion and the helicarriers were lost HYDRA sent out the blanket call to arms.  
> -Thor and Jane are currently in New Mexico.  
> \- Bruce can't get involved because it would be insanely bad press for the Hulk to be seen squishing human heads the way he did the Chitauri in Avengers.  
> \- Clint is currently on leave with his family.
> 
> Oh, and if you've never heard of the rivalry between Cal Tech and MIT, look it up. Seriously. It is the stuff of legend.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So... this took forever to get out, and I apologize for that. Not the quickest updater of the bunch, me. But in apology, have an extra long chapter!

          Being alone was never a problem for Darcy. She spent the greater part of her childhood with no one for company. No one wanted their children playing with the crazy woman’s daughter (and all of her classmates seemed to look at her and know that Diane was crazy, her first lesson in how vicious adult gossip could be), so she learned how to entertain herself. It gave her one hell of an imagination, and it was amazing how useful a good imagination was, even to an adult. Especially to an adult that was trapped in a cement cage with absolutely nothing to keep her occupied.  


          First, it was daydreaming about what Thor would do to the people who took her when he found out she was missing. Even with Thor and Jane taking their mini-vacation Jane would wonder why she wasn’t getting her text reminders to stop thinking about her stupid equations and just enjoy life for two weeks. Pre-red-goo-of-destruction Jane might not have noticed her missing for a month provided there was readily available food and coffee. Post-red-goo-of-destruction Jane, with her reaching serious levels of creepy need to keep tabs on everyone, might notice in a day, two at most. Which meant the cavalry could already be coming, or not, considering that she had no idea how long she’d been held prisoner.  


          After Darcy got bored imagining Mjolnir tearing everyone a new asshole she started singing. Her voice wasn’t bad but it was only passable at best so she started going through her show tunes playlist alphabetically and loudly, not caring if she didn’t hit the high notes spot on. In fact, as time went on she let herself get more and more off key. She got to _Bye Bye Blackbird_ before static interrupted her.  


          “Stop singing.”  


          She started back twice as loud. They wouldn’t care about her making noise unless they were somewhere making noise would attract attention. Plus, fuck them. If they didn’t want her to sing they should have given her a TV, maybe a PlayStation.  


          That’s how she found out there was gas in the vents.  


          It wasn’t like in the movies. There were no billowing noxious green clouds floating down from the air conditioning. Instead, she started getting confused halfway through Cabaret. Her mouth couldn’t remember how to form the words to songs she’d sung since high school. Darcy had the barest moment to think, Oh, shit, before she wasn’t thinking anything.  


          Coming out of what had to be her second bout of being drugged wasn’t nearly as bad as the first. This time instead of her stomach turning inside out she just felt groggy, her eyes gummy and her lungs burning just a little.  


          “Ms. Lewis.”  


          Darcy jumped up, back against the wall, and groaned. Fuck, she was sore. It felt like her whole left side was one giant Charlie horse. She also felt warmer. Darcy looked down and saw that her skirt and sweater were gone, replaced by what looked too much like a white prison jump suit. She also couldn’t feel her bra or panties, and the lack made her breathing kick up as a true anxiety attacked coiled in her chest.  


          “Ms. Lewis?” The words were sharp.  


          She focused on the voice as much as she was able, fighting to get her breathing back under control. Would Natasha crumble into a useless ball after waking up in different clothes? Hell no, she’d find the fuckers who stripped her and tear their larynxes out.  


          The chair across the room was occupied. The woman sitting in it was older, maybe mid-forties, dressed in a black pantsuit and jacket, graying hair pulled back in a severe bun. She sat there like she’d been there the whole time, her expression bored.  


          “I’m sorry about the accommodations, Ms. Lewis,” the woman said, but there was no apology in her voice. “but they were the best to be had under such short notice. I also understand you’re going to be a little bruised from your fall.” She gestured with one hand. “Your watchers were forced to calm you earlier, and your clothes required changing after you soiled yourself. I promise you were not otherwise molested while unconscious.”  


          The anxiety was still there, waiting to find a crack to worm through, so she fought back with the only thing she had: anger. “You should invest in a bathroom,” Darcy countered as she pulled herself into a sitting position, back against the wall and knees pulled to her chest. She knew she wasn’t supposed to talk, but fuck that. You didn’t play nice with people who drugged and kidnapped you, then changed your clothes while you were unconscious. “And carpet.”  


          The Bun smiled slightly. “I’ll have you brought to better accommodations after you answer a few questions for us.”  


          Darcy rubbed a hand along her shoulder. The whole thing felt like one big bruise. “Questions?”  


          “You worked for SHIELD, yes?”  


          “Who?” Never admit, that’s what they told her during her brief indoctrination to SHIELD. Never admit, never volunteer.  


          “Strategic Homeland Intervention: Enforcement and Logistics Division,” The Bun clarified. “Under Dr. Jane Foster.”  


          “I worked for Jane,” she answered, trying to observe everything. The woman wore no jewelry that she could see, but her ears were pierced more than once on one side.  


          “And Dr. Foster, in turn, worked for SHIELD. Therefore, you worked for SHIELD.”  


          Darcy shrugged. “If you say so.”  


          “I do.” The Bun leaned forward, hands clasped. “Dr. Foster’s research is of extreme interest to my employers, Ms. Lewis. We would be most grateful if you would tell us what you know.”  


          “But I don’t know anything.” That much was the truth. Exposure to material did not an astrophysicist make, and that kind of math was never her strong suit. “I don’t know what you were told, but I’m not a physicist. I scanned, I filed, I made coffee. That’s pretty much all I did.”  


          Something flashed in the other woman’s eyes. “You have access to her research.”  


          “If you call staring at piles of squiggly lines research.” She shrugged and hissed when the movement pulled at her shoulder. “I worked for her one summer, she liked me, offered to pay, and I stayed on.”  


          “And what of the Tesseract?”  


          That made her blink. The what now? “Is that a band?”  


          The Bun studied her for a solid minute, and Darcy tried her best not to fidget, which meant she only squeezed her toes rhythmically. “We are trying to be as civil about this as possible, Ms. Lewis,” the woman said. “I would hate for things to get more stressful for you, or for Agent Coulson.”  


          She blinked at that. Coulson. The person her mother said she'd brought home last Christmas. The SHIELD agent she straight up mouthed off to a death Goddess for. The mystery man who was haunting her without even trying. “Who?” Her voice was strangled.  


          The Bun turned back to her, and Darcy felt a chill. Before the woman's expression had been bored, maybe a little put out at having to talk to her. Now she was interested. “Agent Philp Coulson, most recently of SHIELD.”  


          Darcy folded her arms around her legs in response.  


          The Bun walked to the door and it opened, whisper quiet. The slide must have been a front, make her think the whole thing was rusty and loud so they could scare her with the whole appearing in her cell out of thin air act. Sneaky.  


          Darcy forced her hands to uncurl from her knees and counted down from one hundred. Her heart felt like it was trying to jump out of her chest and stinging sweat pooled under her arms. _Shit. Shit fuck shit fuck shit!_ When she got to zero and was no calmer she started again from a thousand. She looked at the ceiling and wondered if Heimdal would answer if she called him. Zap her the hell out of here and drop her off at the Tower. Or in Australia, or anywhere, so long as it wasn’t here.  


          “Heimdal,” she whispered. “Hey, if you can hear me, dude, can you send a message to Thor and tell him to climb off Jane for a few minutes and rescue me?” She looked up. “I’ll make you a batch of the best cloudberry muffins you’ve ever tasted.”

_____________________________________

          After months of being an honored guest in Stark’s tower Thor felt it necessary to wander. His friend’s home was a marvel of Earth technology, with every need seen to almost before it was discovered and filled with his Earth friends and his lovely Jane, but there was so much more to see and do on Earth than remain in a single tower, however well furnished. His forays into New York with Darcy and, on occasion, Steve, were entertaining and educational. For Darcy, New York was a place of mystery and discovery, and she enjoyed walking the city with him armed with a map and the ever-present construct Jarvis on her phone. When Steve joined them on their adventures he would lead them away from the places known as ‘tourist traps’ to places little traveled by outsiders. It was unfortunate that Steve, Clint, and Natasha were so often called away, and when they moved out completely he found himself missing his companions.  


          Despite his desire to remain among them, Thor found himself struggling to understand some of humanity’s more interesting traits. Their isolation meant that humans were a collection of vastly different languages, traditions, and cultures, lacking the singular drive and focus of almost all advanced races. The first time he flew to Canada to observe a festival being covered on the news he almost caused an international incident and received a long, detailed course in international politics and geography from both SHIELD (who he suspected didn’t want him to go anywhere outside of the United States without an escort) and Jarvis (who explained the proper means of obtaining permissions outside of SHIELD’s rigid channels)  


          In his year living among them, Thor also observed that humans had devised a near infinite means of amusing themselves without the need to leave their homes. Games where you could pretend to be a soldier or mage, where you could explore detailed worlds so life-like he often had to check with Jarvis to know if the like existed somewhere on Earth. The television was by far the most ingenious creation, filled with images real and imagined. For a people that had yet to travel outside of their own solar system, humans could certainly conjure breathtaking worlds filled with wonders eerily like some he witnessed firsthand on realms trillions of miles away.  


          Still, Thor found himself growing restless as time passed. He was used to living idly to some extent. As a prince, his time was his prerogative outside of official functions, and there was only so much time one could spend training. If her were home he would call upon his friends to join him on a quest or in carousing to pass the time, but on Earth, those pursuits were lost to him. The humans were enthralled by the heroes who saved them, and his attempts to ‘bar hop’ as it was known on Earth with Tony Stark were less entertaining and more fighting through vast throngs eager to get a glimpse at their saviors.  


          It was when Jarvis showed him a series called Planet Earth that Thor decided it was time to see more of his adopted home world. While breathtaking, the images could not tell him what the jungles of Borneo smelled like, or how the sun in Madagascar would caress his skin in the early morning. He decided to treat himself and Jane to an adventure. It was meant as a present to mark the second anniversary of their meeting. The continent of Australia was vast, filled with many wonders, and was as far as one could get from New York and remain on the planet. The planning was something he was unused to. Loki or other dignitaries were the ones who dealt with such details in the past when there was an official visit, otherwise, he and his friends would pack what gear they felt they needed and head into the countryside or to the Bifrost. On Earth, traveling between countries was much more formal and required a large amount of paperwork, rented accommodations, and proper currency, as Earth did not utilize a singular coin and gold would not be accepted as a valid form of payment.  


          As plans went, this one proved successful. He lured Jane away from her lab with promises of going to the New Mexico facility but did not admit their true destination until they were well in the air. Jane was reluctant to leave her research, at first, but he convinced her that she sorely needed the time away to relax and regroup. She agreed to leave the large travel suitcase containing her notes on Tony’s plane, so most of the journey was filled with furious tapping and her questions on how temporal physics and interdimensional travel worked. It was interesting, though he admitted that his brother would have been the one to ask, as his understanding was rudimentary at best. Rudimentary by Asgardian standards was still well beyond what humans were capable of, though some of his explanations left his love more puzzled than when he began.  


          Australia and its islands were as beautiful as the pictures presented, and the days spent in the sun brought much-needed color to Jane’s skin and relaxed the tension in her shoulders. Her smile reappeared, and it was something he sorely missed in New York. In all, he would have considered the trip a great success, if it were not for the current situation.  


          “Return Jane to me and I will let you live,” he warned, letting Mjolnir spin in his hand.  


          Jane was standing stiff and pale in the arms of one of the villains facing him, eyes wide as a gun pressed into her temple. Five others kept their weapons trained on him, and another four were already on the ground, unconscious. The attack was well planned, as he’d left their rented home in an attempt to purchase goods without Jane’s assistance. If he had not returned when he did she would be gone.  


          The assailants responded to his demand by opening fire. Their weapons were of a larger caliber, and stung mightily, but did not pierce his skin. He stepped forward and stopped when the gun to Jane’s temple pressed harder.  


          “You will not kill her,” the words were like glass in his throat. “If you kill Jane, nothing in this world or any other will save you. Let her go now and I will be lenient.”  


          The man holding Jane sneered. “Cut off one head, son of Odin, and two more shall take its place.”  


          Thor’s eyes widened. He recognized the words of men prepared to die, who perhaps expected to die.  
Time seemed to slow. He threw Mjolnir as he saw the man’s hands tighten on the trigger of his gun. Jane’s eyes went wide, fear turning her skin pale and sickly. He was moving behind Mjolnir, but he would be too late, he knew. Too late to save her. Too late to do anything but avenge her death.  


          Then there was red.  


          Power expanded through the room, strong enough to send him flying backward amid the sound of shattering glass. He hit the water, and only training kept him from inhaling until his feet were beneath him and he was standing in the shallows. His hearing was strangely muffled, and he could feel hot liquid, hotter than the cool water, running from his ears. He was outside the villa, the sliding glass door he was thrown through empty of glass.  


          “Jane!” He shouted, and the sound of his voice came to him as if down a long tunnel. He struggled to the side of the pool and pulled himself free of the water, desperate to reach his love. He stopped at the door.  


          There was no sign of Jane’s attackers though their weapons remained, warped and twisted pieces of metal scattered on the floor. What furniture there was blown outward, smashed into the walls. Jane knelt in the center of the destruction, shaking, head down as her hands moved up and down her arms as if brushing something away. Mjolnir sat behind her, a large dent in the wall at roughly the height of the head of her captor.  


          “Jane.” He repeated, crashing to the floor beside her and gathering her into his arms. She was speaking, he could feel the vibrations against his chest, but her words were still muffled. “Jane, are you all right?” He set a finger beneath her chin and lifted her head so he could see her eyes.  


          They were black.  


          “Jane?” He repeated slowly, trying to remain calm.  


          “… off…” her words came to him, soft and broken. “I can’t get if off…”  


          Thor stopped her hands. Faint red lines stood out against her tanned skin, crimson energy that traced the path of her veins. Energy he knew well. Thor called Mjolnir to him, and the weapon was barely in his hands before he screamed. “Heimdall, open the Bifrost now!”

_______________________________________

          Though he, technically, wasn’t a corporeal being, Jarvis did love to fly.  


          The ability to see the world through a bird’s eye view was nothing new. His first forays into the complex stream of data transfers outside Sir’s private servers lead him to satellites and observations stations; a vast sea of eyes pointed towards the Earth’s surface. Jarvis could remember Sir’s first flight; the way he ignored Jarvis’ warning about the terabytes of data that needed to be codified and took to the sky with abandon. Excluding the deicing situation (the conclusion of which was enough to force several buffer overflows from Jarvis and give him his first true glimpse of what fear felt like) it was a rousing success, and he enjoyed every time he was allowed to take sole control of one of his creators suits and travel under his own command.  


          He was not enjoying his trip now.  


          Anthony Stark was a man filled with contradictions, but there was one aspect of her personality that never changed; he took care of the people he cared for. Earning your way into that position was often difficult, as years of disappointments and betrayal made him wary of strangers and their motives, but if an individual managed to work their way into his confidence, they remained there.Darcy Lewis was a recent addition to that list of individuals, and in her short time in Tony Stark’s sphere of influence, she formed a rare bond with his creator, and with Jarvis himself. She treated everyone around her equally and showed him an amount of concern that was only echoed in his creator himself. Just a few days ago, she shared her newest iteration of his proposed body with a smile, laughing about how hard it was to keep things secret when the walls in most rooms literally had eyes. When he questioned one of her design preferences she shrugged.  


          _Why a cape? Why not a cape? Capes are awesome!  
_

          Jarvis examined the footage of her kidnapping pixel by pixel, trying to find some piece of information that would reveal Darcy’s current location. That, coupled with the destruction of a SHIELD facility just hours ago (followed by reports of attacks on SHIELD buildings around the world) painted a dire picture. Sir was already shaken by the attack on the Tower’s servers, and that coupled with the attacks made him go into something of panic mode. He wanted everyone he cared about at the Tower, and he needed them there now. Ms. Potts was currently in the Tower saferoom, and Colonel Rhodes was wearing the War Machine suit and working to clear debris on the Potomac. So far, the only Avenger he was able to make contact with and assure himself of their continued good health was Dr. Banner. Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and Clint Barton all remained unaccounted for. Both Thor and Dr. Foster were supposed to be on Hamilton Island, and that was where Jarvis was headed now.  


          “Sir, I am still unable to contact either Thor or Dr. Foster by phone,” he reported back, as he had every hour since his flight began. The suit was working admirably, considering he was traveling at a sustained rate of Mach II.  


          “ ETA?”  


          “At my current speed, roughly five minutes.” He dropped to Mach I as the edge of Hamilton Island came into sensor range. “Sir, I am detecting an atmospheric anomaly.” The sky above the island swirled and darkened, and a single pillar of light shone down for a moment before vanishing. “Sir, there has been a Bifrost event.”  


          Jarvis was aware of the loud, creative, multi-lingual cursing his creator indulged in as he floated above the rented home where Thor and Jane were staying. The top of the building contained a single, circular hole, the floor beneath scared by the Bifrost pattern.  


          “Sir, I am detecting no life signs, though there appears to have been a battle.”  


          The living room was a shamble, furniture destroyed, a single, large hole marked one wall and the pool was full of shattered glass. Spent shells littered the ground, and the twisted shape of one rifle revealed it to be a modified MARCK-15. “Sir, I believe Thor and Dr. Foster are no longer on Earth. Have you had success in contacting the other Avengers?”  


          “Clint phoned in, said he was alive and wanted to know what the hell was going on,” his creator ground out. “Still working on Cap and Nat. No luck on Darcy. What’s the damage down there?”  


          “Structural integrity is currently at 90%. The Bifrost missed all load bearing beams, and most of the damage outside the roof appears to be cosmetic. Would you like me to contact the insurance agency and begin the necessary forms?”  


          There was no response.  


          “Sir?”  


          “Sure, J. Start all that. Just come home.”

____________________________________________

          Tony found Cap at Walter Reed almost by accident after over a day of not-frantic searching. No one was willing to answer his questions about what was going on, so he and JARVIS went digging once the suit was back in storage. The hospital was smart and kept just about every reference to a Steve Rogers or Captain America restricted to hard copy, but they had to have a bed listing in their systems just to keep things from getting confused. A double room that didn’t have a single occupant after a major disaster was fishy. One that also logged more medication than any two rooms combined pointed exactly where he wanted to go.  


          Getting into Walter Reed wasn’t the hardest thing he’d done, but it was close. The military closed ranks around one of their own and it took some finagling, including reminding one very stuck-up general about their time in Amsterdam (complete with pictures) to get him the clearance necessary to walk past the cadre of guards and into Cap’s room.  


          He was surprised to see someone already there when he opened the door. A man sat at Steve’s bedside, an iPod sending soft R&B through the room as he read with the posture of someone used to spending a lot of time on uncomfortable hospital furniture. He looked up, expression wary as the door opened and one hand slid beneath the magazine in his lap, then incredulous as he took in the billionaire.  


          “He was asking about you,” the man said quietly as he stood. At the new angle, Tony could see he had his own collection of bruises purpling the skin around his mouth and eyes. He slid the .45 concealed by the magazine into a holster hidden by his jacket. “Made Natasha promise to get you word he was here as soon as you were cleared.”  
Cleared? Cleared from what? “Haven’t heard from her.”  


          The man’s expression twisted into a humorless smirk. “Figures.” He held out his hand. “Sam Wilson.”  


          “Tony Stark,” he answered as he shook his hand, eyes straying back over to his friend. He couldn’t recall seeing Steve sleep. In fact, as far as he was aware the man never so much as dozed if there were other people in the room.  


          “The doctors say he’s gonna pull through,” Sam said into the silence. “They were worried about some of his wounds when he first came in, but his healing’s off the charts. He’s been drifting in and out since yesterday.”  


          Wounds. He’d seen the man take full blasts from alien weapons and fall multiple stories. He took a direct hit from Thor’s hammer and stood back up with a snarky question. “Don’t suppose you know anything about Natasha?”  


          Sam crossed his arms. “Gunshot wound to the shoulder, minor electrocution. She pulled some stitches in the fighting.”  
He blinked. Remembered how it felt when they hooked him to a car battery in that fucking cave. Remembered Yinsin’s shouted warnings that the torture would kill him faster than the shrapnel eating its way to his heart. There was nothing minor about being electrocuted. “Minor?”  


          “One of her own weapons. Non-lethal. She’s been in and out a few times, too.”  


          She was probably hiding in the vents, ready to stab him in the neck.  


          “We’re fine, Tony.”  


          Steve’s voice was rough, rougher than he could ever remember it being. He turned to the bed to see Cap watching him with exhausted eyes. There was bruising around his jaw and nose, several things that looked like abrasions that were probably a hell of a lot worse a day ago. His breathing was heavy, but there was a hitch to every inhale that spoke of some internal issue. “Is everyone all right?”  


          “Don’t suppose you’ll give me the rundown?”  


          Cap’s expression turned mulish. “I said I’m-”  


          “He was shot three times,” Sam broke in as he turned the music down. “The last one nicked his spine. The docs were worried about some loss of feeling, but that’s come back. That’s on top of a broken jaw, broken nose, separated ribs and shoulder, pneumonia and being bruised all to hell.”  
Tony could feel himself going pale as Sam ran through the list of Cap’s injuries. Steve just glared daggers at the other man.  


          When he finished, Sam gestured to Tony. “Listen, I just thought he should know, all right?”  


          “Can you kinda give us a minute?” Tony asked, though his tone was more a demand. “Avengers stuff.”  
Sam glanced between the two of them and stood at Steve’s small nod. “Sure.” He left, but not without a look that promised he would pull Stark’s heart out through his asshole if he did anything to hurt Steve.  


          “I like him,” Tony said flippantly once the door closed. “Solid guy, pays his rent on time. Jarvis says he has quite the military record.” He tapped his small ear piece. Tony moved to the side of the bed and fiddled with the blinds, opening them and closing them several times. “This is archaic, even for the army,” he muttered, reaching out to flick one of the blinds. “I mean, this is actual vinyl. Haven’t these people heard of Roman shades? Enclosed?”  


          Steve huffed a small chuckle. “I’ll be sure to let the staff know what you think about their blinds.”  


          “Why didn’t you call?” The question slipped out. He didn’t mean to ask so abruptly. He meant to string it out, start asking questions about the care Steve was getting, segue into a discussion on having him airlifted to Stark Tower and its new and improved medical facilities, then ask what the hell.  


          Steve breathed as deeply as he could.  


          “I mean, I understand this isn’t 1944 and I’m not my Dad, but come on,” Tony turned to him, and he knew there was no hiding the hurt he felt. “You didn’t really think I was some HYDRA goon, did you?” Because that was the only reason Steve wouldn’t call for help on something this huge.  


          “I didn’t know who I could trust,” Steve said finally. “The Director of SHIELD shows up looking like he escaped a bar brawl and gets assassinated in my apartment. His last words were to not trust anyone. The next day men I’ve fought beside for months try to take me into custody without a word of warning. I didn’t know what was on the USB Fury gave me, and it seemed like that was the key to everything.” He coughed wetly then took a shallow breath through his nose. “I didn’t believe you were HYDRA, Tony. But I didn’t know if anyone close to you was.”  


          He wanted to say that thinking like that was what lead to the destruction of three helicarriers, dozens of civilian injuries and deaths, and the wholesale destruction of SHIELD itself. Everyone who wasn’t scurrying to HYDRA was being scooped up by the alphabet agencies. Steve should have called him in. Should have trusted that of all people, Tony Stark wasn’t part of a Nazi cult. But what about Pepper? The thought made him feel cold. No, Pepper wasn’t a HYDRA plant, she couldn’t be.  


          “Tony?”  


          He cleared his throat. “J? Update on the data dump? We have any players I need to take off the board?”  


          “I have identified six individuals who appear to be HYDRA agents embedded in Stark Industries including Dr. Engels,” JARVIS answered. “The one with the most influence appears to be Director Calvins. I have forwarded the information to the FBI and taken the liberty of rescinding their access to SI properties and terminals.”  


          Calvins. That little shit was the first one to sign off on Obi’s coup. Hard on that realization was _not Pepper, not Pepper, not Pepper!_ The knot in his chest eased, and he felt like an ass for even considering it. Was that what Steve had been going through for days; not knowing if the people he talked to, worked with… hell, saved the world with, were waiting to stab him in the back? Wondering if a place he thought was safe was going to crumble around him?  


          Tony cleared his throat. “So… looks like you’re gonna need some place to stay for a while,” he hedged, testing the waters. The last time he offered the apartment Steve flat out if politely refused.  


          A smile ghosted across Steve’s features. “You offering me your couch?”  


          He pretended to be offended. “If you call 4,500 square feet, private patio, Olympic sized swimming pool and Cap-proof exercise equipment a ‘couch’, then yeah.”  


          “Don’t suppose you have two of those on offer?”  


          He did not jump. To his dying day, Tony would swear on a stack of physics journals that he did not jump. He may have squeaked. A small, manly squeak. How in the name of the brass rat did the woman get in the room without him noticing?  
Natasha looked much the same as she always did, minus the sling and a collection of faint scratches on the right side of her face. No one would have thought that the agency she worked for had crashed and burned spectacularly less than 48 hours before.  


          “Natasha.”  


          “Stark.”  


          He looked between the two of them. Cap needed a place to stay, and without SHIELD footing the bill (and with the army still working out exactly how much back pay he was owed), he was pretty much guaranteed. Natasha, he was sure had a collection of bolt holes she could hide in until the end of the world.  


          Natasha’s smile was sharp. “Still trying to get everyone back at the Tower?”  


          “Trying?”  


          “Knock it off, you two.”  


          They turned innocent looks to Steve. The man huffed a sigh before nodding. “Looks like I’m in, Tony.”  


          “Excellent!” A weight he’d been ignoring lifted from his shoulders. It didn’t mean much, there were still about fifteen other weights he had to deal with. “I’ll send you the brochures while Pep and Happy work on getting you transferred-”  


          “Transferred?”  


          Tony blinked. “Didn’t I mention the state-of-the-art medical facilities?” It was truly amazing what a few days and the kind of the money he could throw around accomplished. “And the added certainty that a HYDRA goon isn’t going to slip you battery acid.”  


          Steve made a face at that. While he was still digesting the image, Tony turned to Natasha. “Care to talk about decorating? I mean, the webs took a long time to get right, but I think you’ll like it.”  


          Natasha didn’t smile. She picked up on his tension, so she followed him with a short “Perimeter secure,” to Steve. As they slipped out, Sam Wilson slipped in and took up his position at Steve’s bedside. They closed the door on his resigned, “I know what you’re gonna say.”  


          “What’s up?” Natasha asked as they walked away from the room.  


          “I got a problem.” He took out his phone and showed her the clip of Darcy being kidnapped.  


          Natasha’s expression didn’t change. Not a flicker, not a twitch. “Time stamp says 30 hours ago. Any contact?”  


          “No.” He tucked his phone away. “I’ve had JARVIS working every CCTV in the city. He got as far as a small, private hanger in White Plains. No flight plan, no berthing number, no cameras. The van is SHIELD issue.”  


          “Could be HYDRA,” she mused.  


          “Could be?”  


          She gave him a blank look. “Protective services picked up a lot of people after the helicarriers went down. SHIELD installations all over the world were hit, not just here. Most we’ve been able to recover.”  


          “But not all.”  


          “But not all.” Natasha’s expression clouded. “She’s got connections to all of us, especially Thor and Jane, and access codes for the Tower and private floors.”  


          “First thing JARVIS did when we found out was change everything up. Any attempts to access SI servers or the building using her ident are flagged and sent straight to me and security.” And JARVIS himself would run any lead into the ground looking for her, but he knew Natasha didn’t quite like the thought of an independent, JARVIS controlled suit running around Midtown. “Thor and Jane are MIA. Jarvis said there was a firefight and damage consistent with a Bifrost event on Hamilton.”  


          “Since Thor isn’t rampaging through the streets, we can assume Dr. Foster is alive.”  


          “Or she was. I’ve had Jarvis combing through the data dump, flagging relevant information and forwarding it out to law enforcement, but Darcy…” She was a civilian, not a senator or scientist with national security clearances. She would be last on any list other than his. “I need help. How’s the shoulder?”  


          “Healing.” Natasha frowned. “I have some eyes and ears that might be good, people still in the loop.”  


          “There’s still a loop?”  


          “There’s always a loop, Stark.” She half-turned to the room. “Steve’s not gonna like being left out. He has a soft spot for Darcy.”  


          “He can barely talk without hacking up a lung.” Not true, but Cap was in no condition to go running after anyone.  


          She raised an eyebrow. “Do you really think that would stop him?”  


          No, not realistically. “Give me 48 hours before raising the old man’s blood pressure.”  


          “48 hours. I’ll send out some feelers, see if I can’t get the lay of the land. Word is SHIELD, the real SHIELD, is out there, somewhere.”  


          “Wonderful.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed ^_^

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I think is fic will be roughly the size of my others (8-10 chapters) and I'm hoping that I can update at least once a week. Hope you enjoyed ^_^


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